Here's How To Delete Your Facial Recognition Data Stored By Facebook

This revelation came after a string of privacy and security goofs by Facebook, so a new safeguard that the company is putting in place might put some of its regular users at peace. Facebook announced this week that it will allow its users to opt-out of some facial recognition features available on the site. Users will have the ability to disable facial recognition, after which Facebook will no longer automatically suggest that you tag friends in a photo. Likewise, Facebook will no longer automatically tag you in photos.

If you opt out of facial recognition, you will also no longer get those annoying notifications for Photo Review, which ask you to confirm (and tag yourself) in photos posted by fiends to Facebook. Opting out of facial recognition also has another consequence according to the company:

When your face recognition setting is on, we crate and use your template to compare it to analyses of other photos or video to recognize if you appear in that content. We don't share your template with anyone. We'll keep your template while your account is active but will delete it if you turn your face recognition setting off.

Turning off facial recognition (and hence deleting your template) is relatively easy to accomplish from within the Facebook app. Simply navigate to the Settings & Privacy menu under Settings, click Settings, and scroll down to the Privacy section. From there, you can tap Face Recognition. Then you'll have the ability to enable or disable the feature.

"We’ve continued to engage with privacy experts, academics, regulators and people on Facebook about how we use face recognition and the options you have to control it," writes Facebook. “We don’t share your face recognition information with third parties. We also don’t sell our technology.”