Yesterday, Facebook asked me to send them a photo of my face or they would shut down my account. Not only did I not want to send them a photo but I had just returned home from a trip and really wasn’t in the mood for this type of intrusion. However, in order to keep my account, I did it. Apparently, beginning last April, Facebook started rolling out this new requirement: upload a picture of your faces for access to your account.
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This new kind of CAPTCHA is being used by the social network to verify people’s identities and they will lock you out of your account if you decide not to upload an image or if you upload an image it considers to be “invalid.”1
In November, a screenshot was posted to Twitter showing a message The Independent reported saying, “Please upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face. We’ll check it and then permanently delete it from our servers.” (However, visit that link and you’ll see the page is no longer there.)
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A Facebook spokesperson told Wired that the new system is in place to help the social media giant catch “suspicious activity at various points of interaction on the site,”2 but users have reported problems with the process:
“Another user, called immorano, said, “Believe it or not, every time I log in facebook ask me to upload a front face image of myself and deactivate my account. 12 hs later they activate it , it goes just fine for half an hour and they deactivate it again and ask me for another … picture.”
Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global safety:
“As part of our continued efforts to better detect and remove content that violates our community standards, we’re using image matching technology to prevent non-consensual intimate images from being shared on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Groups and Messenger.”
Yes, you read that correctly. Facebook now may ask you to upload a naked picture of yourself and not only are you supposed to do it but trust that the photo won’t make its way around the world wide web or be seen, passed around, laughed at, etc. by Facebook employees!
Has this happened to anyone else yet??????
