Thursday, June 09, 2011
h4ckfreak
I rarely upload photos to my Facebook account and was surprised the other day when, after uploading a few vacation pictures, Facebook had identified the faces of the people in my photos and asked if I wanted to tag them. Of course, it’s not always accurate, but I was impressed at how Facebook got about nine out of 10 matches right, identifying the correct names with the faces. It made my tagging-time much lower, but it also creeped me out a bit. Where did this feature come from, and why wasn’t I notified of it?
The facial recognition feature, called Tag Suggestions, is selected as the default on Facebook, which, not surprisingly, has a lot of people upset. It’s really not hard to change the settings, but it’s a little annoying that you have to opt out instead of opt in. If you’d prefer to opt out and turn off facial recognition, here’s how:
1. Look to the upper-right-hand corner of your screen and click the Account drop-down menu.
2. Click Privacy Settings.
3. Select the Custom tab on the left-hand side of the column towards the bottom of the page.
4. Select the Customize Settings option at the bottom.
5. The second set of options on this page is “Things others share.” Click on the Edit Settings button under “Suggest photos of me to friends.”
6. Here, you’ll see a dropdown menu on the right selected as “Enabled.” Click that and change to Disabled.
And that’s it! Once you disable the Tag Suggestions feature your friends won’t be able to automatically tag you in any photos. You may not see the option yet, but it’s coming. Facebook is in the process of rolling it out worldwide, so make sure to check back if you’re concerned about being tagged. If not, don’t worry about it and wait for the slew of email notifications from your Facebook friends telling you that you’ve been tagged in 30 photos.
