1

Anne McEwan
Randy Dryer
Honor 3374
March 17, 2016
Get Out Of My Face(book)
As of 2013, over 250 billion photos had been uploaded to Facebook, with 350 million
new photos uploaded daily.1 These staggering numbers make Facebook the largest online photo
database to date. The sheer amount of photos stored within Facebook are impressive by
themselves, but are a little more noteworthy when you look behind the scenes at what is being
done with these photos. In June of 2012, Facebook acquired the company Face.com,2 which is a
business that specializes in facial recognition and identification. If you will remember, around
the same time, Facebook started offering you the opportunity to easily tag your friends in photos.
A notification would pop up asking if you wanted to tag Stacy in 4 photos, and of course you
wanted to tag Stacy! Stacy is your friend and you want to remind her of all of the cute photos
you took Saturday at her bridal shower, especially if you look the cutest in said photos.
Unfortunately, what many of us failed to recognize is that you have not only given Stacy an
opportunity to see and recognize her face in these photos, but you have given Facebook valuable
information about your friend, her face map. Facebook has been very smart about the way they
have implemented their facial recognition system. Facebook itself has not linked anyones name
1 Smith, Cooper. "Facebook Users Are Uploading 350 Million New Photos Each Day." Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc,
18 Sept. 2013. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

2 Udell, Cherise. "The Potential Danger of Facebook Tagging." Facebook Warning: Do Not Tag Faces. Care2, 5 Aug. 2013.
Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

to their image, and in doing so have helped themselves stay away from the average citizens
privacy concerns being agitated. Instead, Facebook has put the power in our hands.3 We are the
ones that tag our friends in the photo from Friday night, our friends are the ones that give us a
shout out with a childhood photo on our birthday. We do the identification for them. We tell them
who Stacy is.
Now, why is this valuable? People know Stacy already. Stacy has always and will always
have her face. What is the big deal if an online entity can also know Stacy? The concern among
privacy advocates is that at this point, Stacy, and you, and anyone else who has been tagged in
this photo has lost control of where their information will go. Your face is something that is
yours forever. It is uniquely yours just like your social security number. People take caution to
protect their social security numbers, but why do we not feel the same way about our actual
identity, our face?
No Meaningful Consent
The reason so many privacy advocates are up in arms about Facebooks facial recognition
is not the mere fact that it exists. Google has a similar system, and so does Microsoft, as do many
other websites. Certain phones and applications allow you to log in via your face print. Facial
recognition itself is not overwhelmingly foreign or novel. The issue with Facebooks tagging
system is that there was no express, meaningful choice.4 You dont get a blue notification telling
3 Megan Geuss. "Facebook Facial Recognition: Its Quiet Rise and Dangerous Future." PCWorld. 26 Apr. 2011. Web. 17 Mar.
2016.

4 Facebooks Statement of Rights and Responsibilities states that, Your continued use of the Facebook Services, following
notice of the changes to our terms, policies or guidelines, constitutes your acceptance of our amended terms, policies or
guidelines. With Facebook being the largest social media platform, for a lot of people this is not a fully actualized choice, many
use and require Facebook in their daily lives for business and socializing. "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities." Terms of
Service. Facebook, 30 Jan. 2015. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.

you that the company is tracking your biometrics. In fact, they tried to slide in the tagging
suggestions as seamlessly as possible within their existing infrastructure. They offered it as a
new, fun way to revolutionize your Facebook experience. They didnt ask if you wanted this
feature, they just installed it and did the old ask for forgiveness later rather than permission
first approach. This is what is disturbing.
The difference between Facebook and other third party apps that utilize facial recognition
is that there is no opt in feature. A great example would be Facedeals, a company that has been
working through Facebook since around the time Facebook first implemented facial recognition.
The way Facedeals works is that you walk into a business with a special facial recognition
camera installed, and if you have opted into the service via your Facebook page, your face will
be recognized and coupons and deals for that business will be sent directly to your phone. These
coupons are based not only off the store that you are in, but off what your profile says about you.
If you are strongly religious and do not drink alcohol and have posted something about that or
joined organizations or pages referencing that, and you walk into a pub, you will likely receive
offers for cheaper food rather than beer.5 Put simply, Facedeals is targeted marketing at the point
of purchase based off your social media history. Now, the use of a service like this may not be
the best for ones privacy, but that is not the debate being posed today. With Facedeals, however
intrusive this service may be, the user had to sign up for it. They had to click yes they agreed on
the terms of service, even though no one reads those anyway, and they accepted that their data
was being combed through in order to offer them tailored advertisements. They had to opt in.
Facebook, however, gave us only an option to opt out. Even when you opt out of this service,
all this does is disallow your friends from tagging you in future photos. This does not erase the
5 Brading, Anna. "New Facebook App Facedeals Scans Your Face to Offer You Deals." Naked Security. 14 Aug. 2012. Web. 17
Mar. 2016.

facial data they already have stored on you. Your biometrics are still in their system and you can
still be recognized via a photo search.6 Photo searching is one of the many issues privacy
advocates are concerned about. Facebook currently has the technology available for you to
upload a photo of a friend and find their profile immediately based off of their look. They
havent implemented it yet, possibly due to the widespread bad taste this would produce among
privacy activists, offering the potential for even more criticism of Facebooks privacy measures.
Now the concept of photo searching doesnt sound too worrisome, does it? It would
certainly simplify things. Perhaps I had met a friend at a club and couldnt quite remember their
last name, but I had a group photo with them. I could upload this picture to Facebook and find
my friend instantly. Wouldnt that be nice? Unfortunately, although a service like this would
likely be intended to use among current friends and start out as friends searching friends, it
would then progress to friends searching friends of friends, and ultimately end with anyone in the
entire world being able to search for anyone else. You could be walking down a street and have
your photo taken, without your knowledge or consent, have it uploaded to Facebook, and
suddenly have a stranger know a lot about you. Depending on what you put on your social
media, this could range from anything as simple, though no less troublesome, as your name, to
things like your alma mater, your workplace, where you live, your contact information, and your
family members. The potentials for identity theft, cyberbullying, pedophilia, and online stalking
are tremendous. We should all breathe a sigh of relief that Facebook has not yet implemented this
sort of usage of their technology.
Law Enforcement and Private Sector Use of Facial Recognition

6 Megan Geuss. "Facebook Facial Recognition: Its Quiet Rise and Dangerous Future." PCWorld. 26 Apr. 2011. Web. 17 Mar.
2016.

Moving beyond internet creeps and identity thieves, this technology could also be used
and abused by law enforcement officers. A good use of this software would be to scan an image
of a crowd in a mall in order to find persons of interest for example, a kidnapping suspect or
victim. A bad use of this software would be to scan an image of political protestors in order to
obtain their identity and punish them accordingly. Big brother, anyone?
Facebook has struggled to find a way to monetize their product beyond ad revenues and
apps and games for purchase, could facial scanning become their new business strategy? Imagine
a world where your potential employer not only casually glanced through your social media
feeds to see if you were a good candidate, as many employers are doing these days, but also had
access to Facebooks facial database and ran a quick facial scan across the internet to see where
you popped up. Maybe your face appears in a picture taken where there is underage drinking or
illegal drug use? Perhaps you were not even the one drinking or smoking in the photo, but for
many employers that would be enough to question your moral character and not hire you because
of it. Or, picture this, you are applying to work for an animal rights lobbyist, and a picture comes
up of you digging into a big, juicy hamburger. If it were a vegan or vegetarian based company, it
is likely you just lost a potential job.
Going back to the law enforcement side, that same picture with you in a room of
underage drinkers or illegal drug use, even if you were not currently drinking in that particular
photo, would still lead to you being punished if your face were recognized. As far as we know,
the government does not have access to Facebooks facial recognition database.7 Unfortunately,
7 The government may have access to Facebooks database without it being public knowledge, but many would argue they do
not have access yet. This speculation is based off of facts like the FBIs facial recognition data base is only comprised of 50
million photos and Facebook has over 250 billion, with more uploaded daily. Facebooks software is on average 12% more
accurate than the FBIs system. Although none of this means for sure that the government has not accessed Facebooks data base
and software, this shows in order to improve the accuracy and scope of their system in the future, court orders from the
government to obtain access to Facebooks programs and data are likely to surface.Hernandez, Barbara E. "Facebook Has Better
Facial Recognition Than FBI." NBC Bay Area. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.

that access could be just a court order away. One of the biggest current news events was the clash
between Apple and the FBI over decryption and privacy.8 Although it has been less widely
reported on, Facebook themselves is currently in a legal tangle as well. Facebooks case is
revolving around information that was obtained from 381 of their users last year by Manhattan
prosecutors. This data encompassed nearly everything the site had stored on these people,
including: pages they liked, their messages, and their photos. Although their biometric maps
were not collected, the collection of their photos is arguably just as dangerous, as this is just one
step away from positive identification. Facebook argues that this was a Fourth Amendment
violation because the warrant the government used to access these files was too broad.9 The
outcome of this case will likely not affect the governments access to Facebooks facial
recognition data, although it could, but both this case and the case of Apple and the FBI show the
reach the government has over private companies. There could come a day when Facebooks
facial recognition data is subpoenaed and becomes property of the government. This would allow
them to perform the photo searches I have described with a greater accuracy than the FBIs
current system, NGI (Next Generation Identification). The reason the accuracy would increase is
that Facebook has more photos of more people stored in their database, allowing for more

8 In this case, the FBI was seeking access to a deceased terrorists IPhone and asked Apple to hack into the phone to retrieve the
sensitive information they suspected was there. Apple refused to help, arguing they were committed to their customers privacy
and even they didnt know how to hack their phones. The FBI obtained a court order that would require Apples engineers to
develop the software to hack the phone. In the midst of the events, several people came forward claiming they could assist the
FBI in unlocking the IPhone. The case became moot because a party did help the FBI gain access to the phone.Barrett, Brian.
"The Apple-FBI Battle Is Over, But the New Crypto Wars Have Just Begun." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 30 Mar. 2016. Web.
03 Apr. 2016.

9 Lowensohn, Josh. "Facebook Fights US Court on Overzealous Search Warrants." The Verge. 26 June 2014. Web. 19 Mar.
2016.

opportunities for their system to recognize someone. If the government had access to these files,
they could use them for a lot of good, worthy arrests with the potential of some very wrong,
unfair ones as well.
Data Security
Another concern beyond photo searching that has been mentioned with the
implementation of facial recognition technology on Facebook is that this data is being mass
collected. Although it is difficult to collect other forms of biometrics in bulk, for example,
fingerprints or hair samples, it is easy to collect faces. Take for example a group picture with
multiple people, perhaps our underage drinking shot from earlier. Within seconds, that photo can
be scanned through a database such as the one Facebook uses and easily identify these people
with a 97.25% accuracy, which is just below a humans recorded accuracy. For a little
perspective, the FBI claims their facial recognition software NGI only performs to a roughly
85% accuracy.10 Additionally, Facebook has also manipulated their technology in such a way that
it can recognize you even if your face is hidden. Things like your body shape, your posture, your
hair color and length, and your gait in a video have all been recognized via their system.
Although this form of recognition is not as accurate, with an 83% accuracy,11 it is just two
percentage points away from being in line with the FBIs standards.
Another issue that is on the top of privacy advocates agendas is the risk of a hack. Since
Facebook stores the biometric data of both users that have opted out and those users who have
stayed with the tagging program, there is a large database of biometric identifiers being stored on
10 Elgan, Mike. "Is Facial Recognition a Threat on Facebook and Google?" Computerworld. 29 June 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.
11 Mchugh, Molly. "Facebook Can Recognize You Even If You Dont Show Your Face." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 24
June 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

their servers. If this data were to fall into the wrong hands, disaster could ensue. The rate of
identity theft would go out the roof immediately. Not only would these hackers have access to
tidbits of information like mothers maiden names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses,
family members, and hobbies, they would additionally have your face identified for them. The
problem with that scenario is we are, undoubtedly, our face. Everything else we do online is tied
to virtual identifiers like email addresses and browser cookies. They are all just combinations of
letters and numbers. If your email or bank account is hacked, there is no doubt that some damage
may be caused, whether that damage be fiscal or otherwise, but eventually things will work out.
You can obtain different logins and different account names and rewrite your presence online.
You can even petition the government for a new social security number in cases of fraud or
domestic violence.12 Numbers can change. Letters can change. Your face does not change. Even
as we age, our face still keeps the distinct characteristics that facial recognition works of off like
distance between the eyes, height of the cheekbones, and other visual identifiers. Cosmetic
surgery is one option to alter your looks, but, unfortunately, these procedures are not only life
changing, invasive, and expensive, there has been some doubt as to whether surgery alterations
would work. Some facial recognition companies have begun work on algorithms that can provide
partial matches and customize their analysis in order to be able to identify those who have had
plastic surgery. If these new systems do everything the researchers want them to, there will be no
escape. Your face will forever be yours and nothing will change that.
Out of curiosity, I googled How to Hack Facebook and was disappointed but not
surprised that my search came up with 125,000,000 results.13 In .58 seconds I was offered over a
hundred million sites to choose from. Some had step by step tutorials if I was a Do It Yourself
12 Meyer, Robinson. "Who Owns Your Face?" The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 2 July 2015. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.

kind of hacker. Others were companies generously offering their hacking services to me for a
small cost. In 2011, Facebook said they had over a billion log ins per day and that .06% of those
log ins were compromised. Compromised being a less threatening way to say hacked. That
means that 600,000 Facebook accounts were being hacked daily.14 That is a lot of accounts.
Unfortunately, Facebook did not give us information as to how many of these compromised log
ins were merely hacking attempts and how many were successful hacks that resulted in the loss
of consumer data. In 2015, the New York Post reported that number has decreased to 160,000
accounts hacked daily, but that is still dangerously high.15 Most of us have been sent a deal for a
free IPad or half off Nike shoes from our friends and realized that this spam was the result of a
hacker and avoided clicking on links or wiring money. Other individuals who were less lucky
had their personal identity stolen by hackers. Ironically, there was even a popular hack going
around that questioned the integrity of Facebooks privacy protections. Messages appeared on
many a wall featuring a tiered payment plan to ensure your privacy on Facebook, $9.99 per
month for Gold member protection, $6.99 for silver, and $3.99 for bronze. If you copied and
pasted the link your Facebook privacy services would be continued for free. In other cases, if you
paid a small fee upfront (to the hackers) your privacy would be extended as well.16

13 Of course, due to the way Google uses key terms, I was receiving sites that mentioned How, To, Hack, and Facebook in
them, as well as or, but nonetheless, the first 13 pages of these results were sites either explaining or selling ways to hack into
Facebook accounts.

14 Jaccarino, Mike. "Facebook Hack Attacks Strike 600K times per Day." NY Daily News. New York Daily News, 29 Oct.
2011. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.

15 Callahanmar, Maureen. "Big Brother 2.0: 160,000 Facebook Pages Are Hacked a Day." New York Post. 01 Mar. 2015. Web.
19 Mar. 2016.

16 "FALSE: Defiling Fees." Snopes. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.

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These scenarios are not good, but what if Facebooks facial recognition software and data
was compromised and taken over by a hacker? That picture of your children smiling on their first
day of school has not only their smiles but also their name verified and attached to the image of
them. Combine that with the information likely to be on your Facebook page like your
hometown, your work place, your childrens school, and photos of their after school activities,
and that hacker knows a lot about your family. In addition, unless you have updated your privacy
settings, your phone has automatically geotagged each and every photo you uploaded to
Facebook, meaning this hacker knows exactly where and for whom he is looking. Now imagine
that hacker is a pedophile or a kidnapper. He knows information you cannot change. No amount
of makeup or glasses or ball caps can disguise your children. Companies are not immune from
the world of hackers. No firewall is safe from a breach. We have seen it before with the New
York Times17 and Ashley Madison websites,18 hackers can and will harm large corporations, and
it is only a matter of time before Facebook falls prey to a hack much greater than half off Nikes.
There are over 1.44 billion active Facebook users19 whose identity has been put at risk due to the
photos they have uploaded, likely without proper understanding of how these images can be
used.
Facebooks Evolving View on User Privacy
Initially, in 2004, when Facebook was a mere 5 days old, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of
Facebook, bragged about the sites extensive privacy options. He continued to echo these same
17 Fung, Katherine. "New York Times Hacked: Website Back To Normal After Outage." The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 29 Aug. 2013. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.

18 Hackett, Robert. "What to Know About the Ashley Madison Hack." Fortune. Fortune, 26 Aug. 2015. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.
19 "Stats." Facebook Newsroom. Facebook. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.

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words in public appearances and blog posts for the next few years.20 The notion that only your
chosen friends could see what you posted was a backbone to the startup social media business.
However, as the company grew, so did the money making potential. Like any smart, questionably
ethical businessman might, Zuckerberg started focusing on growth of the company and growth of
his fortune over his customers and their privacy.
One of the first notoriously red flag moments was in 2007 when Facebook launched
Beacon. Beacon was simply an entity that allowed advertisers to track your movements on the
site in order to better tailor their advertisements to you, or as Facebook might say, enhance your
experience. Never mind that the enhanced experience only amounts to more of your personal
data being collected and sold in order to increase Facebooks profit margin for the year. The
backlash against Beacon was so strong that it actually ended in a class action lawsuit requiring
Facebook to shell out $9.5 million, and the program closed in 2009.21 Everything Facebook has
done with their implementation of Deep Face, yes that is actually the name of their facial
recognition program, should be just as controversial and alarming to people as Beacon was.
Although advertisers cannot see our identity connected with our interests, Facebook can and that
is dangerous to our privacy. In a Time Magazine interview from 2010 Zuckerberg stated: What
people want isnt complete privacy. It isnt that they want secrecy. Its that they want control over
what they share and what they dont. The problem with this philosophy is that he is not only
preaching to the choir, but he is preaching falsehoods. Throughout Facebooks history, the ability
for users to control their information and identity has declined consistently. The default privacy
20 Zimmer, Michael. "Mark Zuckerberg's Theory of Privacy." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2014. Web. 19
Mar. 2016.

21 Johnson, Bobbie. "Privacy No Longer a Social Norm, Says Facebook Founder." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media,
10 Jan. 2010. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.

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settings make information more readily available to the public. Advertisers and other third parties
are constantly finding new ways to use and sell the data collected from peoples Facebooks.22
Our data is slipping rather rapidly out of our own grasp.
Facebooks constant changes and updates keep it relevant in a world dominated by
change and novelty. Zuckerberg is quoted saying, We view it as our role in the system to
constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social
norms are, which is a fine statement except Zuckerberg also said, People have really gotten
comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with
more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.23 Facebook is the
largest social network and therefore creates the social norms. That does not mean these social
norms are healthy or productive for society. Although Zuckerberg says all this under a guise of
innocence and what is best for the customers, he was singing quite a different tune about privacy
in years prior. The years before Facebook got big and he could capitalize on selling other
peoples information. With the addition of facial recognition, our privacy has once again been put
in jeopardy. Facebook should be setting an example for the tech and facial recognition industry.
Before focusing on expansion and profit, they should focus on infrastructure and encryption.
The European Union Approach to Facial Recognition
Now, Facebooks facial recognition technology is certainly bordering on creepy and an invasion
of privacy due to the lack of transparency and prior consent, but is it illegal? Unfortunately, this
22 Zimmer, Michael. "Mark Zuckerberg's Theory of Privacy." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2014. Web. 19
Mar. 2016.

23 Kirkpatrick, Marshall. "Facebook's Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy Is Over." ReadWrite. 09 Jan. 2010. Web. 19 Mar.
2016.

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question, like many regarding technology and legalities, is not a simple answer, nor a complete
one. Part of the complexity stems from the fact that the World Wide Web is indeed worldwide. In
Europe, Facebook has not been allowed to use their facial recognition tagging system because it
breaks an EU law by collecting biometric data without consent. The Hamburg Data Regulator
justified this position similarly to privacy advocates, arguing that because Facebook was relying
on an opt out method, there was no explicit consent and the law was violated. Facebook
contends that they have not broken the law and that their tagging system is in line with the EU
laws but have nonetheless been barred from using it.24 Similarly, the Facebook application
Moments, which also relies on the use of facial recognition technology, has not been available
in Europe due to privacy concerns.25 The European countries tend to be ahead of the curve as far
as privacy rights go in comparison with America. One example of this would be the
implementation of a Right to be Forgotten on the internet. The Right to be Forgotten applies to
search engines and it erases certain data points and SEO put into place on the search engines in
order to make certain people and situations hard to find. The information is never actually
deleted off of the internet, but without the aid of simplified key word terms, the majority of
people will never find the information the person wanted to disguise. In Europe, the right to
privacy has been deemed more important than certain other rights, like freedom of expression,
which has led to the implementation of programs like this one.26 In knowing that Europe places a

24 "Facebook Facial Recognition Breaks EU Law Regulator. Information Age. Information Age, 11 Nov. 2011. Web. 17 Mar.
2016.

25 Mchugh, Molly. "Facebook Can Recognize You Even If You Dont Show Your Face." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 24
June 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

26 Arthur, Charles. "Explaining the 'right to Be Forgotten' the Newest Cultural Shibboleth." The Guardian. Guardian News
and Media, 14 May 2014. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

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high value on their privacy, it is no surprise that there would be legal remedies to protect the
citizens from the facial recognition monster that Facebook is becoming.
Legality of Facial Recognition in the United States
But how are things faring in America? The United States does not have any privacy laws
regarding facial recognition technology, so Facebook can do what they want with the technology
on their hands, right? Sort of. Again, this is a confusing issue that does not really have a clear cut
answer. On the federal level, Facebook is in the clear. There are not federal laws that have been
passed barring them from collecting this kind of data. In Illinois and Texas, however, there are
laws established that prohibit the identification of a person based off their biometric data without
their informed consent. Considering that Texas has the second largest population in the United
States, this means that 1 out of every 8 Americans has a right to their biometric data privacy.27
There was a class action lawsuit filed in Illinois in April of 2015, Licata v Facebook, urging
Facebook to stop surreptitiously collecting, storing, and using the plaintiffs and the proposed
classs sensitive biometric data.28 Again the issue here is with the lack of consent, not the fact
they are collecting the data, but the fact that the nature of the software has been actively
concealed since it was originally executed. People do not fear or despise the recognition from the
technology, they dislike that once their data is collected they lose control of where it can go and
who may access it. When Facebook initially implemented their new technology program, they
should have started off with an informative, transparent choice for their users to make, rather
than allowing them to discontinue the collection of, but not erase, their biometric data after the
27 Sobel, Ben. "Facial Recognition Technology Is Everywhere. It May Not Be Legal." Washington Post. The Washington Post,
11 June 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

28 Illinois Circuit Court, "Licata v. Facebook" (2015). Historical and Topical Legal Documents. Paper 948.

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fact. In October of 2015, Facebook filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that based on the
companys choice of law provision in its terms of service, it should be California law instead of
Illinois law that would be applied to them. If more states followed the example of Illinois and
Texas and passed their own laws regarding biometrics, United States companies would have
more constraints with what they were allowed to collect and how. Facebook also contends that
the Illinois law does not apply to photographs as being biometric identifiers and therefore they
could not have violated it. Unfortunately, at this time we have not been made aware of whether
or not this case will be dismissed. Many are hoping that this case is moved forward because it
will be the first time that the Illinois biometric privacy law will be interpreted as it applies to
facial recognition technology. 29 If this case proceeds through the legal system, it could
potentially become a benchmark and example for future cases regarding facial biometric
collection, storage, and consent.
Conclusion
Since at this time there are not sufficient legal remedies to protect our biometric privacy
and identities, be smart about your activities online. At the very least, turn off tag suggestions.
Another idea is to use a nickname or a false name on Facebook and other social media so your
real self is harder to identify. You may also want to avoid uploading pictures of yourself and
others in the first place because if there are not biometric identifiers present then Facebook
cannot identify anyone. Another suggestion is to change your profile picture to a cat or a tree
rather than your face. The philosophy behind this isnt to confuse Facebook into thinking you are
actually a tree, but to avoid giving them a positive identification of who you are. Also, go into
your privacy settings and make sure that you are not automatically geotagging your photos.
29 Neuburger, Jeffrey. "Biometrics: Facebook Files Motion to Dismiss Privacy Suit over Facial Recognition Technology." New
Media and Technology Law Blog. 15 Oct. 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

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Geotagging gives an exact latitude and longitude of where that photo was taken. In 2007, United
States service men uploaded a photo of four new Apache helicopters to Facebook, unaware that
their photo was automatically geotagged. Based off of the GPS location from the geotag,
insurgents were able to find and destroy the helicopters.30 Turning off your automatic geotagging
can help to ensure your location remains private. Finally, and ideally, delete your Facebook, as I
have.31 Sure, one person taking a stance against their privacy policies is not going to hurt a large
corporation like Facebook, but at least you can breathe easy knowing you are not setting yourself
and your family up for potential catastrophe in wake of a hack or a misuse of this technology.
You are taking back the control of your identity.

30 Callahanmar, Maureen. "Big Brother 2.0: 160,000 Facebook Pages Are Hacked a Day." New York Post. 01 Mar. 2015. Web.
19 Mar. 2016.

31 Levin, Adam. "7 Ways to Protect Your Privacy Before Facebook Gets Hacked." ABC News. ABC News Network, 10 Feb.
2013. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.