Update: Facebook Further Explains Its Facial Recognition Technology, Plus How To Turn It Off

Facebook began rolling out a message to users this week on News Feed that seeks to educate people on how their biometric data — in other words, their face — is being used by the company. The brief message also includes a line telling people that they can turn Facebook’s facial recognition feature on or off. Today, Facebook expanded on their rules for the technology.

“The new setting is not on by default,” Facebook spokesperson Rochelle Nadhiri told WIRED. The new setting respects people’s existing choices, so if you’ve already turned off tag suggestions then your new face recognition setting will be off by default. If your tag suggestions setting was set to ‘friends’ then your face recognition setting will be set to on.”

So what do you do if you want to turn off facial recognition? Thankfully, it’s pretty easy. Just go to Facebook’s Settings, then click Facial Recognition. From there, answer either yes or no to the question “Do you want Facebook to be able to recognize you in photos and videos?” That’s it. However, no matter what choice you make, it’s absolutely worth checking your current settings just to confirm where you stand.