- Posted by Prof. Charles Xavier on PAN, August 4, 2011
LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER
Your face on Facebook ‘your own worst enemy’
New technology can steal Social Security Numbers
Posted: August 03, 2011
8:05 pm Eastern
By Steve Elwart
© 2011 WND
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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.
What else is going on? Read the book “Spychips ” and find out!
In work that was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S… the team noted that Google has acquired Neven Visions, Riya and PittPatt and deployed face recognition into Picasa.
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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: Your face on Facebook ‘your own worst enemy’http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=329441#ixzz1U64gcVxo
I refuse to do Facebook–and the only reason is privacy. It’s too easy to find out too much about me already. I don’t need to broadcast everything about my life and my friends to make it even easier for the government or others. This facial recognition software is scarey stuff.
Great Blog
I was kicked off of Face Book right after Obama got into office. I was posting every article I came across about his history. I was told, “This is a social site, and not political.”
Okay! So! I didn’t go back.
Then, I believe it is WesternJournalism that you have to have a FB account if you want to blog UNLESS it is a poll. So…I developed another FB account. That didn’t last but a couple of days.
My Facebook Account was associated with one of my Yahoo Email Accounts.
Well, guess what!?????
I received an invitation FROM ME TO ME in my Gmail Inbox….Obviously, I did NOT invite myself to join “me” on Face Book.
I never went back.
Terrorists have FB accounts and nothing was said. BUT! Uploading articles about Obama caused me to be kicked off!
Because I was referencing other posts I made, I was having to “moderate” comments (all in regard to my posted links) that I just trashed. A programming technicality, not to worry. But the fact that gooogle is buried in WP functions is bothersome.