Using publicly available data, it is now possible to identify strangers and gain their personal information – even their Social Security numbers – by using facial recognition software and social media profiles, according to a new study to be presented tomorrow at the Black Hat Security Conference in Las Vegas.
Professor Alessandro Acquisti from Carnegie Mellon University and his research team studied the implications of the combining, or “mash-up,” of three technologies: face recognition, cloud computing (an Internet technology) and social networks.
The team studied the possibility of using publicly available Internet data and commercially available facial recognition software to reveal more information about a person than was intended.
Further, “Apple has acquired Polar Rose, and deployed face recognition into iPhoto. Facebook has licensed Face.com to enable automated tagging. So far, however, these end-user Web 2.0 applications are limited in scope: They are constrained by, and within, the boundaries of the service in which they are deployed. Our focus, however, was on examining whether the convergence of publicly available Web 2.0 data, cheap cloud computing, data mining, and off-the-shelf face recognition is bringing us closer to a world where anyone may run face recognition on anyone else, online and offline – and then infer additional, sensitive data about the target subject, starting merely from one anonymous piece of information about her: the face.”
Acquisti noted that last year, more than 2.5 billion photos were uploaded by Facebook users per month. These users also use their real names, addresses, birthdates and other contact information as part of their profiles on social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google-Plus and others, and in many cases the information is visible to the entire world.
Read More at WND By Steve Elwart, WorldNetDaily
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I had a sinking feeling that putting my picture on Facebook was a bad idea. So glad I followed that feeling and put a picture of something else up there.
I just had this conversation with my grand daughter yesterday. She was using my Mack computer to take photos and upload them to Facebook. I told her to select the photos she wanted to post individually, not to select all, as my ugly mug was in there also. While I had my back to her talking on my 6 meter ham radio to a friend of mine, she selected all.She kept asking me what was the harm while I was crawling over her to get to the delete button. I jumped up and unplugged the high speed connection immediately, and stopped it.Then I explained to her pretty much what this article explains. She still wanted to know what I had to hide. I told her I already had my ID stolen 3 times in the last 5 years. The light finally came on. I also belong to LifeLock now. We are still looking for a new Chevy truck I supposedly bought this past January.
Violet!! Right on!!!! I have my picture no where on the internet…I use the Baron Twin Airplane!! Love that plane!
I absolutely will not post any of my personal information on line ever again!
Somehow my information & photos were stolen & used on numerous Adult Pornography sites & Adult Swingers sites.
I received some of the most disgusting e:mails from both men & women wanting to meet up with me.
Additionally somehow my information was submitted to numerous pornography companies who contacted me about starring in their movies , videos & for photo shoot sessions.
Being a widowed single parent of a four year old daughter I most certainly did not need all of this to happen to me. My Father In-Law assisted me at great expense by hiring a company which specializes in such matters to delete & have all such postings removed from the internet.
Good move Alexia, somehow I think my pics got out somewhere online too (just plain old
normal pics) but it is not safe for anybody female or even males.
I think Robert Crain above states that well.
I have been using facebook myself and find some creepy things going on there and
thinking about just leaving my profile as a clown or something stupid to throw them off.
I'm wondering if there is a way to untag myself from photos people have tagged me in.
Gary I wish I could help you but my father in-law handled everything for me so I have no idea.
This is old news. The fact that Obama and his henchmen have and continue to use Facebook is nothing new. This started way back when he first took, or should I say "usurped" office. It is just one of the reasons I do not use Facebook or any other "social networking" sites.