Facebook has billions of monthly active users. This further concludes that on a daily basis, there are hundreds of millions of images / photos being uploaded.
Imagine all the in-depth details on Facial Recognition that can be obtained with this database. Now imagine all your privacy being destroyed since Facebook has access to all of that.

Pretty intriguing and scary right?

Well, this scary thought is in fact true. Facebook is planning on owning something which is rightfully ours – our faces. Hence, this leads to a huge damage on our complete trust laid out in terms of privacy.

Is Facebook claiming your Face with Facial Recognition?

Facial Recognition can be very useful in many ways. One major use could be the obvious reason to safeguard your account / accounts. This system comes in handy for those who feel the Two Factor Authentication (2FA) is too tedious. Although the 2FA process seems to be the best option for safety purposes, but the facial recognition could avoid the extra device required for authentication.

Facebook launched this technology with the following words, – “Face recognition technology allows us to help protect you from a stranger using your photo to impersonate you.”

This looked like Facebook’s way of claiming our faces to many people and critics. The data could be prone to cyber-crimes (especially hacking). This was further supported by the New York Times report.

Earlier, way back in 2012, Facebook had scrapped this Facial Recognition feature in Europe due to the privacy and security related concerns. But unfortunately Facebook failed to realize the effect it had on privacy, and ended up reintroducing it.

In the past, Facebook made it as a default option to recognize faces when the user used Tag Suggestions. But now they made this feature optional. But, Facebook has already trained its Facial Recognition feature with those millions of photos. Clearly, our privacy is still at stake, especially with the various patents.

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What are the various Disturbing Patents?

Last November’s patent described the system being able to detect the customers inside a store. This matches the customer’s faces with their Facebook profiles and analyses if the customer is trustworthy in purchasing and if they require special attention.

Another patent described the way in which the cameras at the check-out counters matches the customers with their Facebook profiles and hence send messages to their phones.

Other disturbing patents include a system for tracking your emotions by scanning your face and matching that to what you’re currently looking at.

There are many proper, and all this gave way for the criticism about the customer’s privacy.

Is Facebook the only Company?

Not really. There are various other companies such as Amazon, Apple’s FaceID, Microsoft’s Windows Hello, as well as Google, who have all filed for Facial Recognition patents.

Amazon was criticized for its facial technology – Rekognition. This was was marketed to the Police Departments and was used to locate lost kids in amusement parks, etc.

The New York Times has also used Amazon’s technology, for the recent royal wedding.

Alvaro Bedoya, a facial recognition expert, says, “You can delete cookies. You can change browsers. And you can leave your smartphone at home. But you can’t delete your face, and you can’t leave it at home.”

Hence, it is of utmost importance for the people to understand if they could trust Facebook with one of the most sensitive data or not.