Can't find it in my Facebook settings - can you give us a pointer where to find these settings in Facebooks cesspool of anti-patterns they like to promote as the "settings" page...
There's a "Face Recognition" tab that's new to the settings page since the last time I went through disabling things. For me, it shows up on the left side right under "Language".
For me I had a related setting under the "Timeline and Tagging" tab (set to "No One"), there was no "Face Recognition" tab... until I click "Go to Settings" in the notification, then the "Face Recognition" tab appeared, and the similar setting was removed from "Timeline and Tagging".
No idea. I joined early and didn't really think through some of the privacy ramifications until 2008 or even 2010. Then there are the friends who don't think about them at all, and I assume that Facebook puts some stock in their tags, even if I delete them later.