Meta is testing facial recognition as a way to instantly restore your Instagram or Facebook account if you get locked out. The process of sending a video selfie is much like the Face ID sign-up process, requiring you to turn your head in different directions.
The company is also using the technology to detect and block celebrity scams …
Recovering Your Instagram or Facebook Account
You may be locked out if you forget your login details, no longer have access to your two-factor authentication device, or your account is hacked.
Regaining access can take a long time, and many victims report that the company takes a long time to respond. If the hacker has changed the email address and phone number associated with your account, it can be very difficult to prove that the account is yours.
You may have already been asked to send a video selfie to help the company verify that the account is yours, but manual verification takes time.
Using facial recognition for instant recovery
The company is currently testing an instant recovery feature based on facial recognition technology. You will be asked to take a few seconds of video while moving your head in the same way as when registering your face for Face ID, and then you will be granted access instantly.
The demo Meta showed makes it clear that you can choose between automatic recognition and manual review, so no one has to use it if they don’t want to, and the company says the data is deleted once the process is complete.
Once someone uploads a video selfie, it will be encrypted and securely stored. It will never be visible on their profile, to friends, or to other people on Facebook or Instagram. We immediately delete any facial data generated after this comparison, regardless of whether there is a match or not.
Celebrity Ad Scams
The company also uses the same technology to detect ads that use celebrities’ faces. This will flag the ad for review so Meta can quickly stop fraud.
If our systems suspect that an ad may be a scam that contains an image of a public figure at risk of becoming celebrity bait, we will attempt to use facial recognition technology to compare the faces in the ad to the public figure's Facebook and Instagram profile photos. If we confirm a match and determine that the ad is a scam, we will block it.
It is unknown how many accounts currently have access to the test feature.
Images: Meta
