Facebook fights celebrity scams with facial recognition

Meta will start using experimental facial recognition technology as it works to block false celebrity endorsement scams on Facebook and Instagram.

The move comes after a wave of so-called celeb-bait scam ads using the likenesses of Andrew Forrest, Gina Rinehart, David Koch, Guy Sebastian and many others to compel users to click and be taken to malicious websites. But it also comes around three years after Meta shut down its previous facial recognition system amid privacy and regulatory concerns.

Meta is rolling out new facial recognition tech to address two different problems.

It’s no surprise Meta is focused on celeb-bait scams. It is facing increasing pressure (and damage) from governments, regulators and celebrities to step up its efforts in crushing the ads, which are clearly effective and against Meta’s policies, but have proven difficult to detect. Australians lost $2.74 billion to scams in 2023, and tying scams to a credible identity – especially an identity people trust with financial advice, as seen in many crypto scams – is an easy way to appear legitimate.

For Meta, this is an especially urgent problem. The Facebook and Instagram parent relies on its ads business for essentially all of its revenue. Criminals are exploiting this space to create scams and pinpoint the ideal targets for the scams using Meta’s sophisticated ad-serving systems. Even minor celebrities and personalities can successfully be exploited.

Meta’s existing scam-detection tech analyses the text and images of millions of ads a day, and the new technology will help by verifying when an ad contains the image of a celebrity’s face. Meta has not described the exact methodology but has said facial recognition helps catch violating content faster. It has seen promising results from tests with a small pool of public figures.

Fortescue founder Andrew Forrest took Meta to court over ads featuring his likeness.Credit: Bloomberg

In the coming weeks, celebrities who have a verified account and profile pictures on one of Meta’s platforms will receive a notification saying they’re enrolled in the program, and letting them know they can opt out. If Meta’s system suspects it sees a celebrity face, it will be able to scan the pictures of users enrolled in the program and confirm it, marking a potential celeb-bait scam.

A Meta spokesperson said the new technology wasn’t perfect, but that it was only the start of the company’s efforts.

“This is an adversarial space and scammers continue to evolve their tactics to try to evade detection,” they said.

“We’ll continue working with regulators, experts, policymakers, and other key stakeholders to ensure we build additional technical defences in a responsible and privacy-protective way.”

That last point is key because privacy concerns were front and centre of Meta’s last major public dalliance with facial recognition. In 2020, it agreed to pay almost $1 billion after a US lawsuit alleged its tagging suggestion system (which prompted users to tag each other in photos if it recognised another user) breached privacy laws. It shut that system down in 2021, but another US lawsuit the following year alleged Meta had in some cases stored facial recognition data from users without their consent, and the company settled for another $2 billion.

This time, Meta says any collected data will be deleted immediately after the match or non-match is confirmed, and that the data will not be used for any other purpose.

That same approach goes for another new facial recognition system the company has created, which will be used to help people regain access to their accounts if they’ve been hijacked or locked out.

If someone needs to prove they’re the true owner of an account, they’ll be given the option to take a “video selfie”, turning on their phone camera to scan their face. Meta’s system will then match the video against existing profile pictures on the account, issue new login credentials if there’s a match, and delete the recognition data.

Of course, this will only work if you have actual photos of your face attached to your Facebook or Instagram account.

“It is recommended that people have a clear profile pic in their library. We will use any and all profile photos in your library. So as long as there are stored photos of your face, you can participate in the trial,” the Meta spokesperson said.

“We’re taking an iterative approach with this test, and will rely on its results and on feedback from external experts to make adjustments as we continue to roll it out.”

Meta will continue to offer other account recovery methods, such as uploading a government ID. But it claims the video selfie will be the quickest and easiest method, and also one that will be very difficult for hijackers to exploit.

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