Meta, the parent company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has announced it will trial facial recognition technology to improve the security of its platform.
The new tests will look at two areas – combating celebrity bait ads and helping users retrieve compromised accounts.
Scanners have evolved their methods to try and avoid detection on popular social media platforms.
This is why Meta has decided to trial new ways to protect people and to make it harder for scammers for deceive users.
Meta says that all facial data that’s generated to check your identity will be immediately deleted once the comparison is complete.
Meta says it will not use the facial recognition data for any other purpose.
Today, it is not uncommon to see images of celebrities and other public figures being used to entice users to engage with ads which turn out to be scams.
Meta says early tests have been promising in detecting these scams and plans are now in place to take the initiative even further to a wider group of public figures in the near future.
Scammers have also been known to take over user accounts which become very hard to recover using the current system.
With facial recognition, users can submit a video selfie which will then be compared to the user’s profile pictures to regain access to their account.
In the past, hackers have been able to get around traditional document based identity verification but with facial recognition technology Meta hopes it will become nearly impossible to fake.
But it’s not just a matter of reacting to scams but also preventing them from happening in the first place.
Meta is building new technical defences to improve detection and enforcement capabilities.
The company is building a more stringent risk review process and building more safeguards around privacy.
And facial recognition technology will play a huge part in this plan to allow Meta to offer a faster, more accurate and more effective way to protect users.
