Facebook apparently now can use selfies to help users verify their identities, in their bid to catch suspicious activity on the platform.
The feature isn’t new though, with some users on Reddit and Facebook already having reported the feature being available as early as April.
If you do get prompted for a selfie, you get this message:
“Please upload a photo of yourself which clearly shows your face. When you send us a photo, we’ll check it and then permanently delete it from our servers.”
The feature is apparently designed to “catch suspicious activity at various points of interaction on the site, including creating an account, sending Friend requests, setting up ad payments, and creating or editing ads,”. It’s essentially an automated process that appears when a user is found to have multiple accounts or when they attempt one of the mentioned activities. While the photo is being analyzed, the user cannot log in until Facebook gets back in touch within a 72-hour period.
We’re not too sure how this authentication method would work with accounts who don’t upload actual photos of themselves, but it seems to be a pretty good additional bit of security on Facebook’s part, if you don’t mind sending them that selfie that is.
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