hat are much bigger than the FBI’s collection. Social networks top the list: Facebook, Instagram (which belongs to Facebook), Google (with its Google+), VC.com, and other social sites. The majority of these companies have their own facial recognition solutions that they constantly develop and improve.
Microsoft is now working on a similar technology for the FamilyNotes app that will enable the software to distinguish one user from another with the help of a camera built into a laptop or a tablet. Microsoft develops one of the most popular operating systems in the world, and this app will substantially supplement the company’s database of faces.
— Kaspersky Lab (@kaspersky) April 22, 2016
Facebook’s facial recognition system is one of the most accurate in the world. The company quietly launched this tool in 2012 and kept it on by default for the majority of users. Later, the company faced dozens of lawsuits — that number is still growing , and Google is also being pursued in court on similar charges. As a result Facebook had to disable facial recognition features in certain regions.
We should also note that Facebook has one-sided approach to this issue: For example, its knowledge base has zero articles on how to disable the facial recognition function — which, by the way, is not a one-click operation.
Even if you are not a member of any social network (or if you avoided uploading your real photos to any of them) your face can still get into a social media company’s database. Last year, a Chicago citizen sued photo-book service Shutterfly because the site added his photo to its database without his consent. A third party (a friend, most likely) had uploaded his photo to Shutterfly and signed the image.
4. Anybody can find you
Any facial recognition system that is available for everyone can be used as a powerful tool for lynch-law, or vigilante justice. This year, for example, two young men set a fire in a building lobby in Saint Petersburg. After they finished, the pyromaniacs caused a ruckus in the elevator of the same building. Cameras in the elevator and around the neighborhood recorded how the duo entertained themselves.
When local police declined to open a criminal case, the tenants of the house took matters into their own hands: They took screenshots showing the culprits’ faces and used FindFace to locate them on social networks.
The amateur detectives reported their findings to the police, and as a result, the young men were charged. In Ren TV’s (Russian TV channel) report , one of the tenants said that they had enough data and evidence to send message to friends of the hooligans, and to their places of study and work.
Though the Petersburgers had enough patience to ask police for help, not all Internet users are as level-headed. And where there’s a will, there’s a way — to bully people. If you’ve heard of FindFace, you know about its most infamous use case: when members of the anonymous 2ch image board used it to hunt porn actresses online. The trolls found the women’s social media pages and sent scandalous messages to their friends and relatives along with corresponding images.
— Kaspersky Lab (@kaspersky) April 29, 2016
At the same time, the founder of FindFace Maxim Perlin is sure that nowadays people literally need to pay to preserve their privacy. In a television interview, he said that people who want to wipe their data from FindFace’s database will have to buy a premium account. A month of privacy on the service costs about $8.
5. There is a thin line between security and disaster
Many experts are sure: biometrics will replace passwords and make the world even more secure. So in the future, people will let the systems scan their irises, fingerprints, and even face prints to replace the process of entering complicated combinations of symbols.
Microsoft is already developing technology that allows users to authorize with selfies. NEC is researching the use of facial recognition to secure electronic payments. MasterCard is working on a selfie identification system that lets users send money without passwords.
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