Facial Recognition Software & Social Media Sites Increase Privacy Risk

According to a new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, it is possible to identify strangers and find out their personal information using facial recognition software and their profiles on social media sites. They used a combination of three easily-accessible technologies: an off-the-shelf face recognizer, cloud computing and publicly available information from social network sites.

The team conducted three experiments and also developed a smartphone app. In one experiment, they identified people on a popular online dating site where members protect their privacy through usernames. In a second experiment, they identified students walking around campus, based on their profile photos on Facebook. And in the third experiment, they predicted personal interests and, in some cases, even the Social Security numbers of the students, beginning with only a photo of their faces. Head of the research team, associate professor Alessandro Acquisti, said:

A person’s face is the veritable link between her offline and online identities. When we share tagged photos of ourselves online, it becomes possible for others to link our face to our names in situations where we would normally expect anonymity…The seamless merging of online and offline data that face recognition and social media make possible raises the issue of what privacy will mean in an augmented reality world.

The results of this study were presented at Black Hat, a security conference in Las Vegas, on August 4th.

Carnegie Mellon University