Facebook and Instagram have launched a service that invites users to send intimate photos for security purposes on social networks

Meta, the parent organization of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus, has partnered with UK hotline Revenge Porn Helpline to launch StopNCII.org, a platform that invites users to send intimate photos for safety on social media. About it it says on the Meta website.

“This platform empowers people around the world to actively discourage the dissemination of their intimate images without consent on the platforms of participating technology companies, giving victims greater security and control over their images,” the company said in a statement. Meta emphasizes that the launch of the service was supported by more than 50 non-governmental organizations around the world.

According to Meta, the photos will be converted to a hash. At the same time, the company promises not to store the images themselves and not to transfer them to third parties.

The company invited users whose photos or videos have already been published or can publish on the open spaces of Facebook and Instagram, to select files that the system could quickly detect. After uploading the photo, the user needs to create a unique PIN by which the status of checks can be tracked. The pictures are subsequently converted into a digital print, which social networks will have to use in the search for similar images. The technology is capable of deleting only those photos that are identical to the original file.

According to Meta, the original image will remain on the user’s device, while the hash will not be able to restore the original content of the file. Only adult users will be able to upload photos.

Facebook employees have been testing this technology in Australia since 2017. Users needed to send pictures to themselves in Messenger chat. Subsequently, other people had to look at them in order to manually create a hash. Facebook chief security officer Antigone Davis emphasized that the photographs were seen by “only a very small group of about five specially trained analysts.” Subsequently, the feature was launched for users in the US, Canada and the UK.