IT security firm Sophos has recently unveiled that Facebook’s facial recognition technology; a service that was originally only rolled out in North America has recently been activated by the social networking giant in countries throughout the world without any prior notice. Many Facebook users have been frustrated by the lack of options to pre-approve the photos that they have been tagged in, and they are forced to manually untag themselves from the photos that they have been tagged in.

“Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission,” said Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos. “Most Facebook users still don’t know how to set their privacy options safely, finding the whole system confusing. It’s even harder though to keep control when Facebook changes the settings without your knowledge. Facebook users should have to ‘opt-in’ to the facial recognition feature, rather than the onus being on them to ‘opt out’.”

There is however a method for users to control the new feature. In the settings menu, Facebook users can do so by disabling the “Suggest photos of me to friends” feature. For more information on how to configure Facebook’s privacy settings, visit Sophos’ post here.