Facebook pilots scheme to shield profile photos from identity theft

FACEBOOK announced a pilot scheme of new privacy tools today to help prevent people’s profile photos being stolen and reused on fake accounts.

The social network is stepping up its fight against “cat-fishing”, where an impostor uses someone else’s pictures to create an identity and trick others into becoming “friends” or forming relationships.

The new “photo guard” tools are being piloted in India with the hope of expanding “soon” to Facebook’s nearly two billion users worldwide.

Users will get the option to activate a blue border and shield around their profile photo to help dissuade others from downloading and sharing it without permission.

A choice of patterns can be overlaid over the picture, which Facebook said in tests made it 75 per cent less likely someone would try to copy it, such as taking a photo of a photo.

Facebook’s coders have disabled right click and save for protected profile pictures, or long pressing on a smartphone screen to copy it. Also “where possible” they will “prevent others from taking a screenshot of your profile picture”, but currently only on phones running Android.

There are further new restrictions on tagging another person’s profile picture without being friends with them.

Project manager Aarti Somon said users were put off uploading a profile picture showing their face for fear it would be stolen and reused without their permission.

Fake accounts are a huge problem for Facebook and in 2012 the tech giant reported there were 83 million of them. But profile photos are set to public by default for all Facebook users, which makes them vulnerable to reuse without permission.