Facebook conjures up a trap for the unwary: scanning your camera for your friends Facebook has decided it doesn't pester its users enough, so it's going to use its facial recognition technology as the basis of a new nag-screen. The ad network is testing a feature in its Android app that will scan a user's recent images for photos that look like their friends. If it spots a match, it'll ask if the photos …
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My only suggestion to Zuck and his mates is for the opt out button to be nice and big with the helpful text of "fuck off" in nice big bold caps.
The only opt out that really works is leaving Facebook altogether (just read their conditions and you'll see that you're otherwise to be milked in full), but it has been clever enough to make itself part of people's social life :(.
If others are stupid enough to post their lives online then frankly they deserve what they get.
You would get the same reaction from a banker when he saw you took out a loan or did not pay your credit card in full at the end of the month, just as an example.
I cannot condemn people for being innocent and a little bit naïve because they don't happen to have my specific expertise. That sort of arrogance is what gives IT people such a bad name - try to help instead.
"I cannot condemn people for being innocent and a little bit naïve because they don't happen to have my specific expertise. That sort of arrogance is what gives IT people such a bad name - try to help instead."
Oh please. You don't have to be in IT to know that publically posting your details will seriously impact on your future privacy. These people wouldn't post them on a sheet of A4 and stick it to a lamp post yet they seem to think its ok online. Quite how their reasoning works there is anyones guess.
@boltar -
"You don't have to be in IT to know that publically posting your details will seriously impact on your future privacy."
I'm afraid you're wrong about that. Most Facebook users I've asked think that their data is 'private' and is only shared with people they know. There is a prevailing cluelessness about the evils which lie within the Facebook corporation's user agreement.
None I have ever spoken to have any awareness at all of the invasive cross-site tracking which Facebook performs even with the user logged out. Remember, Zukerberg himself referred to his user base as 'morons', probably with some small justification from a certain point of view.
Oh please. You don't have to be in IT to know that publically posting your details will seriously impact on your future privacy.
OK, here I have to jump in.
First of all, few know what privacy actually is, let alone appreciate it or they would not even use Facebook, Google or any other service of that type.
Secondly, even fewer have any kind of idea what the impact is of a loss of privacy. The majority will go through life without any impact whatsoever on their lives, it's only those that got burned via malicious activity (trolling, ID theft or other) that develop an idea of the risk they have been exposing themselves to. If you want any evidence of that, just see ho hard it is to stop otherwise intelligent adults posting something that can expose them to risk. Interior design (nicely showing off all the kit they have), holiday plans/pictures (so it's safe to raid the house) - and that's just burglars.
Thirdly, as few ADULTS have a clue, just what sort of clue do you reckon children have? Rerember, kids have the ability to legalise data collection off them as young as 13. I know adults who are not clued up about the impact (see point 2 above), I certainly have no expectation that children think ahead, even though they are more comfortable with the technology itself.
To counter crooks you have to learn to think like a crook. I think it's actually a good sign from a humanitarian perspective that the majority of the population cannot do that. Personally, I see preserving that innocence as a rather important aspect of security work. We deal with the evil part so our customers don't have to.
You would get the same reaction from a banker when he saw you took out a loan or did not pay your credit card in full at the end of the month, just as an example.
I doubt that you would get that loan or CC without having had to read and sign beforehand the T&C, which tends state the amount you need to pay back and such.
Farcebook has the rather annoying habit of changing their T&C to fit their latest info-grabbing venture. Such a change to a loan contract (except the contractually provided-for variations in interest rates) would lead to interesting.cn repercussions for the provider.
The only opt out that really works is leaving Facebook altogether (just read their conditions and you'll see that you're otherwise to be milked in full), but it has been clever enough to make itself part ofpeople'sthe least common denominator of society's social life :(.
There, FTFY
Actually, this could be enormous fun. Even worth setting up an account for. Under an appropriate name, of course. Possibly.
Imagine:
Get your"self" friended or whatever the word is by as many self seeking self important idiots as you like. As high a profile as possible.
A set of photos, some slightly dodgy - nothing illeagal of course, but people - or animals - that farcebook might "recognise" as certain people - innocently designed to be possibly somewhat offensive and definately not pc to said obnoxiorati.
Wait for the recognition algorithms to do their work.
BINGO.
Had to nip out to the post office yesterday just after kicking out time at the local Schools. On the bus ride there I was joined at the back of the upper deck by several spotty teenage youth in uniform. One of them had an impressively high resolution image of one lady and four men engaged in what I now understand is a position referred to as 'airtight'. His phone was filled with such images and as this was the latest addition he was bluetoothing to his mates sitting around him. One of them asked if phone boy had updated his Facebook app to the new version as I was getting up to get off. Can't imagine what the facial recognition software will make of his phone and the contents
Face recognition is fairly expensive, so it's hard to do in a way that would work acceptably (time, memory use, battery impact) on everything, including low-end Android kit, without sending something to a server farm. Both Android and iOS ship with face detection frameworks, but you have to use third party IP for face detection. If your Android device happens to have a Snapdragon (S4 or better) CPU, Qualcomm can help you; on iOS, you'd love to be able to get at Apple's proprietary image signal processor to do the job but, AFAICT, Apple won't let you. So what I'd do is pick out possible faces using the built-in framework, and send just those image fragments to the server farm. Less scope for blackmail, but still greater than zero.
"Face recognition is fairly expensive, so it's hard to do in a way that would work acceptably (time, memory use, battery impact) on everything, including low-end Android kit, without sending something to a server farm."
Indeed, but that doesn't really help matters. If they try to do the work locally on your phone, it will use up all your battery. If they try to ship it off to a data centre somewhere, it will use up all your data allowance. And of course, sending data also uses up the battery to some extent. So even if people are happy with the idea of Facebook scanning everything they ever do on their phone, I can't see how anyone could actually want such a system simply because there's no way for it to work without completely fucking up the normal working of their phone.
Are you sure face recognition is that computationally intensive or power sucking? My 3 year old Panasonic Lumix camera has a face recognition feature where you take reference shots of your family members (or anyone else) which are stored in the camera. It can then find them in a group photo and make sure they are in focus/properly exposed when the shot is taken. All processing done within the camera. Even works with pets.
Sorry for the bad pun, but this just re-confirms my decision to never, ever, get a Bacefook account. My privacy is worth more to me than the convenience of just about everything Mark Z's service offers. Have something important to tell me? I've got a phone. Something not quite that important? Got an email address. I have no need to spread out my private life for the whole world including various secret services to peruse, and if I have something to tell a buddy... I have their phone number or email address. And public keys.
Plus, honestly? I don't have the time to check in with I don't know how many services online; Facebook, Xing, whatever else certain people expect me to be on. I'll stick with what I can reliably encrypt, thank you very much.
The problem is that even if you don't have a Facebook account, your friends probably do.
And if they upload photos with you in the background, and then tag you by name, Facebook now knows who you are.
Look up Shadow Profiles, which is basically the metadata based profile that Facebook has of you based on the contents of your friends address books and posting history. They generally know your public email address, phone number, and who you associate with. It is the same tech that Linkedin uses to suggest people you might know - and you do - but have no idea how Linkedin associated you with them.
but have no idea how Linkedin associated you with them.
I'd hope most people round here can work that out, as it is largely by tracking multiple common contacts. If you know Joe, Steve, Helen, and those three all know Kevin, it isn't a bad guess that you might know Kevin. This works both within and outside companies, but the guess element is easily improved by adding in other common factors (eg places you worked before, industry you work in, your work specialisms, places of study.
The there's more presumptious guesswork, that if you know four people in your company's finance department, then even if they aren't showing as contacts with Roy in finance, you might still know him. Linkedin can test this out by continuously offering suggestions of other names in Finance. This then allows them to fine tune the algorythms to make them more effective. I've noticed that it even offers up names of people on functional working groups that I've been on that go across multiple industries and employers, but it tends to suggest people whose workplace specialisms are similar to mine, showing that there's multiple correlations been established.
@AC.
Yes, the common contacts is obvious. But I only use Linkedin for professional connections. Where Linkedin often surprises me is "you might know" and gives me a name of someone I haven't spoken to in 20 years, have no connections in common with, and knew in a totally different context to my industry. Like my parent's friends' children.
And yes, I do know them, but how the hell Linkedin knows I do is cleverer than simply looking at email addresses or common friends.
If you know Joe, Steve, Helen, and those three all know Kevin, it isn't a bad guess that you might know Kevin
This is a problem. LinkedIn keeps asking me if I know Darl McBride...
I really want them to add a button "Yes, but he's a twat". For reasons entirely unrelated to the above, I assure you...
Vic.
Is the police state worse over there so the population is more docile and accepting of such privacy intrusions?
Once again I'm glad for iOS' security model that lets me prevent Facebook from accessing my photos. If I want to upload a photo to it I can give access just long enough to do so, then revoke it immediately after!
"Hi Bruce. You're friends with Sheila and Bruce. They're both friends with Sheila, do you know Sheila?"
Later, talking to Sheila, "Hey, why did you add Sheila on Facebook? Bruce told me you and Sheila used to go out, are you hiding something Bruce?"
I can predict what will happen the moment they try to let this 'feature' loose in the EU. Calling Max Schrems ...
On the other hand GCHQ and NSA will love it as they can crawl through everyone's photo archive as it is uploaded to the FB servers for processing. Gives them another chance when the user disables the Google sync on their tablet/phone.
/me orders popcorn ready for the show
Seems extremely unlikely that this feature will ever come to Europe since they (and Google) already don't do facial recognition in Europe.
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/09/23/under-pressure-facebook-disables-facial-recognition-in-europe/
It's remarkable how, not having the app installed and only accessing it through the browser, it doesn't eat my battery, nor does it pop up alerts every 5 seconds to tell me another friend has shared that same cat video.
Now if only I could persuade the Kindle app to stop alerting me to "40 new books under £1", none of which I'm ever going to read...
"Now if only I could persuade the Kindle app to stop alerting me to "40 new books under £1", none of which I'm ever going to read..."
Long press the notification, go to App Info, untick the box that allows it to show notifications.
Do this for all of Amazon's apps (and any others that send unsolicited commercial messages), and you get a much nicer Android experience.
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This sort of shite is exactly why I do not, and never will, use this wretched "service" despite nagging from friends and family. The other day I started to install the android client just to show the missus the collosal list of permissions Facebook asks for but shouldn't really need.
And while us IT-literate people might be conscious of just how intrusive Facebook wants to be, believe me the average punter out there neither knows nor cares.
The worst part is that Facebook probably already have your mobile number and details from siphoning it off from other people's phones.
Coupled with if you use Whatsapp for example, they know who you are and who your friends are, and could probably deduce what you look like from friend's photos, even though you don't use Facebook.
The worst part is that Facebook probably already have your mobile number and details from siphoning it off from other people's phones.
Coupled with if you use Whatsapp for example, they know who you are and who your friends are, and could probably deduce what you look like from friend's photos, even though you don't use Facebook.
And therein lies the biggest problem with any Data Protection law you care to mention: they are under no obligation whatsoever to tell you they have this data of yours, nor do you have any way of stopping them bribing your friends with "free" service and apps to provide that information about yours, even unwittingly.
FB & C. should be forbidden by law to store any data about people who didn't subscribe to their services. (from another post in the thread)
I would love to see a way to make that enforceable, but alas, I do not hold much hope for it. Not because it's impossible, but because it would so dramatically kill their ability to make money with data theft that it would cause problems with, er, certain campaign funding activities..
It says something like "recognise me in other people's photos". I'm a bit hazy what it actually says because it's a few months since I went poking around in privacy but there's a setting that means FB will never use face recognition to tag you in someone else's photo.
At least, there used to be...
It says something like "recognise me in other people's photos"
That's for Farcebook customers products.
How about whe some idiot has tagged me*? Will Farcebook then use that info to tag other photos in which I show up? I'll be mightily surprised if the answer is 'no'.
* Needless to say, the info Farcebook has on me will only be through other people providing that info.
How about whe some idiot has tagged me*? Will Farcebook then use that info to tag other photos in which I show up? I'll be mightily surprised if the answer is 'no'.
Ah, but the fun part is that YOU approve a tag, so if you absolutely have to use FB it is a fun exercise to go and tag other faces with your name every once in a while. Just make sure your own profile is free of images with your real face on it (avoid that on LinkedIn as well, for the same reasons). There are two ways to screw up meta data collection: one is to prevent it, but another one is to snow it with fake data. Tag the occasional senior citizen and child as well, that makes a mess of data matching via age bands too.
Stop thinking of these things as problems. Instead, start thinking about how you can turn something like that into entertainment - the above is but an example. Personally, I pity the poor schmuck who gets the job of collecting data on me :)
"Ah, but the fun part is that YOU approve a tag, so if you absolutely have to use FB it is a fun exercise to go and tag other faces with your name every once in a while."
To judge from an earlier post, at least some school-children are already aware of this and are busily collecting and sharing pictures for the purpose.
If you feel FB has some benefit, OK some people find it useful. However, never, ever, ever install the Facebook app! You may as well just get all your private secrets, then pay to have them shown on the big screens in Piccadilly Circus or Times Square in NY, it amounts to the same thing. The FB app is probably one of the nastiest apps for permissions I have ever seen in my life. There's malware writers out there that would sell their own balls to get suckers like FB does with its app.
'I don't have facebook' Isn't 'hipsters new' anything. 'I don't have facebook' is the cry of the socialite who has well-informed contacts who won't be sitting at any get-together with mobile in hand businly trying to find your entry so they can add you to their collection like a new 'top trumps card'.
It's even worse on Linked-'bloody'In, with nascent career climbers hassling you from countries you've never worked in (let alone heard of).
'Hipsters new' is I don't have 'I don't have <insert latest social-connection-fad>'.
WTF is a 'hipster' anyway? I've never met one...
Personally I compromise I have accounts, but I don't use them, I'm bloddy hard to find, and people get warned a friend request might not get okayed for half a year or more,
I also have a TV I don't watch.
It's my understanding that a hipster is somebody who tries to be a contrarian and accidentally becomes conferment with another demographic - other hipsters.
I'm not sure hipster is the right term here, because you can be in the "I don't own a TV" crowd without having a large lumberjack beard.
Considering most governments want to spy on internet users (supposedly in the interests of 'National Security', but what's the odds it won't get sold, legally or otherwise).
It's a full-time job keeping on top of the actions of the legal authority, in comparison, keeping up with the likes of Faecesbook is only a part-time job.
"but have no idea how Linkedin associated you with them."
I'd hope most people round here can work that out, as it is largely by tracking multiple common contacts. If you know Joe, Steve, Helen, and those three all know Kevin, it isn't a bad guess that you might know Kevin.
Facebook recently suggested I knew somebody I used to work with about 20 years ago and I have absolutely no idea how they found the link. I was posted to work on a client's site for a few months and I was the only one from my company who was there and so knew this person. As far as I know therefore we have no other acquantances of any kind in common, I don't have their phone number or email address in my phonebook, and I've changed my contact details since I knew them!
The only thing I can think of is that maybe they searched for me by name within Facebook, but it's certainly more than a bit spooky that Facebook thinks there's a connection!
1. Find a facial picture of Zuckerberg.
2. Photoshop it on to non - Zuckerberg bodies. Don't forget to include bodies having more than 2 legs.
3. Upload liberally.
Advanced photo - editors might wish to consider...
4. Add a second body, suggesting some degree of intimacy between the two. Again don't forget to include bodies having more than two legs.
5. Upload liberally as in 3 above.
6. Sit back and enjoy.
It means Facebook now holds data on you as it does on countless others - without their consent.
And there is no way you'll be able to find out. Google and FB play the same game when it comes to that. The problem goes even deeper: even if they do not know who you are, there is a chain of connected events (searches, site visits, comments etc etc - the works) waiting for you to make the mistake of logging on to a site that will identify you. All it takes is logging on on a site that has FB or Google links on the page with any of their cookies still in your browser, or one of their affiliates and you've now marked that chain with your name.
It really is the most insidious way of spying on people since Eastern Germany.
what proportion of Commentards are (is?) members of Facebook (to take the example relevant to this article) and how this compares to the population at large?
Judging by some of the replies in this thread the answers are "not many" and "far fewer".
Likewise - I think I joined Facebook in the very early days (I really can't remember!) with the minimum amount of information possible (i.e. just a name) because a cousin asked me to, but I logged in perhaps twice before I realised what they were attempting to do and haven't been back since. No Facebook app has ever run on any phone I've ever owned, and these days I actually run my Android phone with data turned off unless I specifically need it*.
It just strikes me as an interesting question - I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the number of Commentards who are also active Facebook users is about half the number of Joe Bloggses who use.
M.
* - this is very OT so doing it as a footnote. I switch the data off because the OS seems to have started using a lot more data recently - from well under 0.5MB per month before the Summer to over 26MB during August, 94MB during September and 60MB in October up until the point I decided enough was enough. I only have a 250MB data plan. My wife's identical phone (both are original Moto Gs) has done the same thing.
Maybe its time to shove a new OS on there...
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