Meta says testing new facial recognition technology feature to help stop scams

Social media giant Meta on Tuesday said it was testing a new feature using facial recognising technology to prevent and stop misuse of images and videos of public figures, especially in cases of fraud, scams and impersonation on Facebook and Instagram.

“Scams and fraud activity is one of the most important security problems that our teams are focused on. We are hoping that by sharing our early thinking, we can help inform our industry’s defenses against scammers targeting people across many different internet services,” David Agranovich, the director of Security Policy at Meta said. He was addressing a select Indian media gathering.

Meta will also use the new technology, currently being run on a pilot basis, to track advertisements which use the faces and videos of public figures and block them from being shown to users if the face matches and the advertisement is confirmed to be a scam, he said.


“We immediately delete any facial data generated from ads for this one-time comparison regardless of whether our system finds a match, and we don’t use it for any other purpose,” the company said.

Apart from this, Meta is also testing a new feature of using video selfies as a means for people to verify their identity and regain access to compromised accounts, Agranovich said.

“The user uploads a video selfie and we’ll use facial recognition technology to compare the selfie against the profile pictures on the account they’re trying to access. This is similar to identity verification used to unlock a phone or access other apps,” the company said.