Facebook Might Use Your Photos To Find Who You Live With & Ad-Targeting

Facebook, one of the biggest social media platform, has taken targeted advertising to new heights. I am often taken aback by the creepiness of ads displayed on my Facebook profile.

Now, a patent filed by Facebook suggests that targeted ads would be much pervasive and relevant in the near future. The application describes a technology that can predict who your family and other household members are, based on images and captions that were posted on the social media platform.

Although the patent application was filed a year ago, it has been made public only just now. According to the filed application, Facebook would use facial recognition and learning models trained to look for cues in your profile pictures and photos of your friends. Your Instagram pictures will also be used for the same.

The technology will generate patterns from the number of times a person is included in your pictures. It will also look for captions, hashtags such as #family, #mom, #kids to identify family members. The patent also tells that Facebook will use the device information as well as the collectively used IP address in consideration.

In one example shown in the application — the trained model looked at two different images posted by a user; one was captioned “#my_boss_at_home,” while another one was captioned “my angel.” In an instant, it managed to come up with a conclusion that there were three people in the household

The application clearly indicates that it will solemnly be used for the purpose of targeted advertising. However, it might become a concern regarding the privacy of users.

Also Read: Firefox Will Now Show You Data Breach Alert If You Visit Hacked Sites