The Hidden Dangers of Facial Recognition: Your Face is Their Data

Everything we do leaves a trace. Have you thought about how pictures of you are being taken, saved online, and, even scarier, are being made searchable by hackers and people who may want to harm you?

Facial recognition technology is used in almost every part of modern life. This technology claims to make things easier and safer, from unlocking phones to getting through airport security. But it causes so many issues for privacy and safety. There will no doubt be issues with all of this facial recognition storage that we haven’t even thought of yet! Just like DNA was never a known ‘thing’ before.

With so many facial recognition systems out there, pictures of your face can be taken and stored without your knowledge or permission. Your picture becomes data that can be viewed, shared, and maybe even used wrongly once it's in these databases.

I have a really cool recent case study where we were even a little surprised at the accuracy of one of our facial recognition tools.

Background: We were tasked with a Digital Vulnerability Assessment (DVA). A DVA is the process of identifying and evaluating potential weaknesses or vulnerabilities in a person's and/or organisation's digital footprints. The assessment is to identify any potential entry points for attackers and to determine the level of risk associated with those vulnerabilities. We mostly focus on what hackers can gather for the purposes of social engineering tactics (a whole new subject I’d like to blog about soon). We gather all kinds of data on our client

We had the clients image from their LinkedIn account. We uploaded it to our facial recognition tool, and bingo, we were provided with a result (below) which scanned this entire crowd in nanoseconds, as well as all other areas of the web and quickly identified our client in a huge crowd of people. Furthermore, this was a side profile of the client, not even a full front image of their face.

Imagine if you were somewhere private, somewhere you just want to be left alone for whatever personal reason that is for. I can think of loads of things that people may want to remain private, particularly locations they frequents. We are all entitled to privacy! Then imagine being somewhere private and someone 20 metres away takes a picture of the crowd and uploads it to the web. Your attendance is essentially no longer private.

As an aside, we have even used facial recognition tools to amazing success when filming Hunted Australia. It has led to some great investigative leads for us where other investigative methods have failed.

This image is for illustration only, no client images are shared publically.

How Facial Recognition Works

Facial recognition technology looks at the unique features of people's faces and uses algorithms to identify and prove them. To do this, a picture has to be taken, facial features have to be extracted, and these features have to be compared to a collection of known faces. Although the technology is impressive, the way it is being used brings up important issues of consent and data protection. This is of course apparent in the case study example above.

How Dangerous Data Breaches Can Be

One of the scariest things about face recognition technology is that it could lead to data breaches. Hackers are always looking for useful information, and files with pictures of people's faces are easy targets. Hackers could steal identities, spy on people, or do other bad things with the information in these systems if they get access to them. You can't change your face like you can with a login. If someone gets access to your face data, it can have long-lasting effects.

Concerns about Privacy and Surveillance

Besides the danger of hackers, there is also the danger of being watched. Face recognition is being used more and more for monitoring by both governments and private companies. In some situations, this can make things safer, but it also puts people's privacy at risk. Being able to keep track of people's whereabouts and actions without their knowledge or permission is a big breach of privacy. People may feel like they are always being watched in this kind of society, which can limit their right to free speech and other social liberties. Once again, this is apparent in the case study example above.

Consent and Ethical Use

One big problem with face recognition technology is that there aren't any clear rules about what consent means. People often don't know that their pictures are being taken and used for face recognition. There needs to be immediate legislation that controls the gathering, storage, and utilisation of facial data, making sure that people are in charge of their own pictures. Here is another thing to think about with data storage and consent. The case study above is an example of a facial recognition tool we used. It is just that, it is a tool. It does not store your data, it simply finds it. It scans other areas of the web for your image/s. So how can we tackle privacy with tools like this? Such a grey area. I will of course add at this point, that these tools are mostly used for good in terms of tracking down criminals, and people like me and my business in helping to keep clients safe online. 

Keeping Yourself Safe

Even though it's hard to stay away from face recognition technology completely, here are some things you can do to stay safe:

Be Aware: Know where and how someone could take your picture. Sources that people often use are through internet research, your business may have you on their site, you may have images online in the media at events, conferences, etc. Obviously, one of the first places hackers will look is social media too. Do you need your image there for work purposes, or could you not have it there? It’s your choice, but do think about risk vs. reward.   

Adjust your Privacy Settings: To control who sees your photos, go to your devices and social media accounts and change the privacy settings.

Push for Change: back laws and policies that protect people's privacy and limit how face recognition technology is used.

Face recognition software is a strong tool that has both good and bad uses. Being aware of how our pictures are being used and fighting for better protections is very important as it becomes more a part of our daily lives. Understanding the effects of face recognition and taking steps to protect our privacy can help us feel safer and more confident in the digital world.