Reverse face search for Facebook photos

Can you reverse image search on Facebook?

Facebook has no reverse image search for users, and it switched off its own face-recognition tagging in late 2021. Finding where a Facebook photo appears, or whether a Facebook profile is using someone else's face, means taking the photo out of Facebook and searching the public web with it. FaceSearch does that for the face; Google Lens and TinEye do it for exact copies of the image, and for a stolen photo it is worth running both.

Facebook is unusual among social networks in how much of a profile is public by default. Your current profile picture and cover photo are always public, whatever your other settings. Anything posted with the audience set to Public is on the open web, as are Pages and public groups. That is why a Facebook profile picture is one of the most common places a face search match comes from.

What is public on Facebook, and what is not

How to search a photo from Facebook

1. 1

   Open the photo at full size

   Click the photo so it opens in Facebook's viewer. Profile pictures open the same way and are served larger there than on the profile itself. A bigger face gives a better match.

2. 2

   Save it or screenshot it

   On a public photo, the viewer's options menu usually offers Download. If it does not, take a screenshot. Either way you end up with a file you can crop.

3. 3

   Crop to one face

   Cut away the interface, captions and other people. One clear, front-facing face filling most of the frame is the target. See the photo tips for what hurts a match.

4. 4

   Run the search

   Upload the crop on the search page. The first search is free with no account. A deep search covers more public sources if the first pass comes back thin.

5. 5

   Compare the source pages

   Open each match. The same face on another Facebook profile with a different name is the classic impersonation pattern. The same face on a news site or an event gallery is usually just the person's public life. The results guide covers look-alikes and empty results.

What results from Facebook photos usually look like

Because most people keep their posts to friends, a search on your own Facebook photo often returns results from everywhere except Facebook: LinkedIn, a company site, a conference gallery, a local newspaper. That is useful in itself; it is your public footprint. The Facebook-specific results tend to be profile pictures, Page posts and public group photos, plus the aggregator sites that scrape public profile pictures and republish them.

The result people search for most is the impersonation case: your profile picture on a second account with a different name, often created to message your friends or to run a Marketplace scam. Finding every copy before you report makes the report stronger. The fake profile guide covers the full sequence.

If a Facebook profile is pretending to be you

1. 01Save evidence: the fake profile's URL, screenshots of the profile and any messages, and your FaceSearch results showing the copies of your photos.
2. 02Open the fake profile, tap or click the three dots under the cover photo, choose Report profile (the label may read Find support or report), then Pretending to be someone, then Me. For a Page, the same menu offers Report Page.
3. 03If you do not have a Facebook account, use the contact form linked from Meta's help article on reporting a profile or Page that is pretending to be you. Reports can be filed without an account.
4. 04Tell your friends not to accept requests or send money, and ask a few of them to report the profile as well.
5. 05If the profile is being used to defraud people, report to your national fraud service too. The how to report a fake profile guide lists the routes by country.

Facebook settings that reduce exposure

• Stop search engines linking to your profile. In Settings, under Privacy, the section on how people find and contact you has the option Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile? Turn it off. Facebook's help article notes that cached search results can linger for a while.
• Set your default audience to Friends and run Privacy Checkup, which walks through who can see your posts, profile fields and friend list.
• Use Limit Past Posts to switch every old public post to Friends in one step.
• Choose the profile picture deliberately. It is public no matter what. A photo that is not a clear, front-facing close-up gives a face search less to work with.
• Turn on profile picture guard where Facebook offers it (it rolled out in India and some other countries); it blocks downloading and sharing of the profile picture.
• Review tags before they appear on your profile, under Profile and tagging, so other people's public photos do not publish your face without you knowing.

Is it okay to search a Facebook photo?

Checking where your own photos have gone, and checking whether a seller, a new contact or a profile that just messaged you is using someone else's face, are ordinary and lawful uses. Identifying strangers is not what FaceSearch is for, and biometric laws in several places restrict it. Our acceptable use page lists the rules; the legal guide covers the US, EU, UK and India.