How Does The Recently Launched Facebook Profile Guard Works?

Facebook on Wednesday launched a new tool to check on the misuse  profile picture, especially for women. Many women prefer not to upload their photos as profile pictures fearing that someone might use it for wrong reasons. The Facebook profile picture guard will keep your profile picture safe online by preventing the sharing, sending and downloading of the profile pictures.

Profile Guard was developed in partnership with various Indian safety organizations like Centre for Social Research, Learning Links Foundation, Breakthrough and Youth Ki Awaaz, and it is designed to give people more control over their experience and "help keep them safe online".

How Does The Facebook Profile Picture Guard Work?

Facebook states that the new profile picture guard will safeguard the profile picture, primarily in four ways.

1. Others will not be able to download, share or message your profile pictures.
2. Strangers will not be able to tag themselves or anyone else in your photos.
3. If possible, Facebook will prevent people from taking screenshots of your profile picture (this is currently available for Android only)
4. Facebook will display a shield icon at the bottom of your picture and a blue border around the edge. This would serve as a visual cue of protection for your profile picture.

How effective are these tools?

There is no way to hide your profile picture currently and it is always public by default. This new method by Facebook can discourage unauthorized access to your profile picture but won't weed out the problem completely. For better safety, it can add options to restrict the viewing of profile pictures to just friends and friends of friends.