Google Face Recognition: 1 Switch
Your children's faces are filed at Google. Every birthday photo got measured and sorted. Each face became a code of numbers. Google keeps those codes for years. Most of us never chose face grouping. Who holds your daughter's face tonight? You'll know how to take those faces back.
Ignoring Google Photos erases nothing. Codes stay until an account sits idle 2 years.
Google's Photos help page lists 3 steps. Google Photos finds each face first. Google measures each face, then piles matches.
Google doesn't need a name for this. Any face counts, whoever took the photo.
Each code describes your child's actual face. It's body data, just like a fingerprint. And nobody can ever change a face.
Google keeps more than just your photos.
Your camera only takes the photo. Google builds the face code afterward. The code and the photo are separate.
Google put this in writing itself. The face codes are stored and used.
Google keeps 3 things about each face. There are piles and number codes. Google keeps the names you typed too.
A hacked account exposes the codes. Your photos leak right beside the codes.
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Illinois has a law about face scans. People sued Google over this face grouping. 9to5Google reported Google settled for $100 million.
Every pile is just Google's best guess. One rough estimate says 80 percent right. That means about 200 of 1,000 faces. Those faces land in the wrong pile.
U.S. testers checked 189 face matchers in 2019. White men got very few wrong matches. East African women got up to 100 times more.
Real family photos make it worse. Faces turn sideways, hide, and blur.
You can't see Google's matching rule. You can't change that rule either.
Only you can see these piles. Google's page says the codes stay in use. Hidden from others isn't hidden from Google.
But your phone isn't the only one. Your cousin's library sorts your face too. So does a coworker's, or a friend's. Your face sits in piles you can't reach.
Switch off Group similar faces tonight. Your photos stay, and the codes go.
Tap your profile picture in Google Photos. Open settings, then Group similar faces. Switch it off and confirm.
Grouping on keeps codes and names. Grouping off deletes every code for good.
Then open Explore in Google Photos. The face circles should be gone. Turning grouping back on starts from zero. You'd retype every name by hand.
The CaraComp write-up goes deeper on this. The full steps sit on that page.
Cara Candelario writes about face matching. She says good security starts with keeping less. Less kept means less to leak.
Choose who takes pictures of your children. Ask where those pictures get saved. Check your Google privacy page every year.
A 93 percent match sounds very sure. It's not a 93 percent chance it's right. A pile of faces is never proof.
Your children's faces were never just photos. You can delete the codes Google kept.
Switch off face grouping before bed tonight. Then text your sister and your mom. Ask your family to switch theirs off.
Google keeps those codes until you act. Take your children's faces back tonight.
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