Facebook Face Recognition

Facebook has announced earlier this month that it will use facial recognition to inform users when a photo of them had been uploaded to the site.

15:50 08 January 2018

This feature may end one man’s 20-year saga of staying anonymous online.

 

Public relations Jonathan Hirshon regularly updates his profile and shares where he is going on holiday, the state of his health, and what he has cooked for dinner with his more than 3,000 friends but has never posted a picture of himself.

 

He said: "I choose to share virtually everything about myself on social media, but my face is the essence of me individually and this is about refusing to give up the last piece of identifiable information that I can control."

 

However, he does not oppose Facebok’s move. He explained: "I'm totally in favour of it but in order to accomplish that, people will have to totally change their mindset when using social media.

 

"Right now, we enjoy them as [a] totally free service monetised by ads targeted very specifically at us because the services know so much about us.

 

"Until such time as we choose to pay for these services, when [we have] the option of keeping our data private and monetising it ourselves, the idea will remain just that - an idea."