How to Turn Off Facebook's Facial Recognition

Facial recognition has existed on Facebook since 2013, where it was initially used to suggest friends for tagging in users photos. Since then, the social media giant has expanded its facial recognition features, most recently in December. 

This souped-up facial recognition is designed to recognize your face when it's posted anywhere else on Facebook. So if another account posts a photo or video of you, whether or not it's tagged, you will receive a notification. 

And this feature likely appeals to a lot of Facebook users. It cuts down on fraud and lets users keep tabs on where their face is popping up across the site. 

But this facial recognition is powerful and may not appeal to others. But if you're not interested in Facebook scanning every single one of your photos, you have the option to opt out of the feature.

To do that, go to 'Settings' and then to 'Face Recognition.' From there you will be asked the question, "Do you want Facebook to be able to recognize you in photos and videos?" and you then select 'yes' or 'no' to answer. 

It's likely that when you go to 'Settings,' you might find that you already opted-in to the feature. According to Wired, this is likely due to previous privacy settings that you had in place when the first wave of facial recognition rolled out on Facebook, around four years ago.