We all want Facebook to keep our personal information safe, but when do security measures go over the line? The next time Facebook detects suspicious activity on your account, you may be required to upload a photo of your face in order to unlock your account. That’s what some Facebook users have been faced with recently.
“Please upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face,” reads the message from Facebook that one Twitter user shared a screenshot of earlier this week. “We’ll check it and then permanently delete it from our servers.”
When reached for comment by Wired, Facebook explained that the face test is meant to help catch people attempting to infiltrate others’ accounts at “various points of interaction,” including creating accounts, sending friend requests and making ads. Once the photo has been uploaded, Facebook will automatically process it and determine whether or not it is a unique photo of the user in question. If it is, the account will be unlocked.
Although the new face ID method is only now receiving widespread attention, Wired points out that users were seeing the prompt as early as this past April, implying that this has been in the works for at least several months.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first Facebook initiative involving photos to receive scrutiny this month. The social media giant has also begun testing a program in which users privately upload nude photos to Facebook in order to prevent themselves from being subjected to a revenge porn attack in the future.
