Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/26/i-tried-to-access-my-secret-co.html
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I can see how this will make the world a better place, I think…
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Looking forward to hearing what they send you. As soon as I saw they were asking for even more information on me, I abandoned the process.
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Yep, honestly i know they have my info. I don’t feel the need to give them additional data just to take a glimpse, now if i could request to have them delete my data or opt out of future collection that would be different but i don’t see how asking for it is going to help.
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Yeah, no. I’m not going to give this slimeball company even more specific info on me to get a glimpse at whatever (deliberately polluted) data they have on me. I’d assume that, even if I asked for my profile to be deleted from their database, they wouldn’t actually do it.
The only way to fight back against a company like this is to support politicians who’ll pass digital privacy laws that drive it and others like it out of business.
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“And why is the algorithm so bad at it?”
Actually, the algorithm was perfect at what it was programmed to do: collect a series of similar photos of you for analysis. The “smile” part was just the excuse.
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Thank you, Friend Computer.
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I tried the same thing and found its software refusing to accept my image upload until I adopted a suitably “surprised” expression.
I kept at it until it finally accepted a picture it liked, but I found it very frustrating to be offered no further description of what qualities added up to “surprised.” Did it want my mouth open or closed?
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Maybe you could have copied in a photo of some random character actor for your drivers license - then some other pictures for the selfie…
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Wow! I hadn’t thought of that. Creepy smart.
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I have a theory: they want to be able to match you to social media posts, and most people smile in their Insta, Facebook, etc. photos.
But now that I’ve read through the comment thread so far, I like @Sam256462’s theory too.
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In a world where there are daily reports of leaks of millions to billions (!) of data sets, it is safe to say that everyone has or at least could have my data. I was recently contacted by Wells Fargo asking that I provide just a bit more info to complete a loan I applied for. Seeing as I have never had any doings with Wells Fargo, I called to find out WTF was going on, only to be asked if I wanted the payments deducted from my WF checking account. Also, no. They had my address, SS#, almost my employer (one letter off), particularly distressing since my employer changed names in July, and this apparently started in September. There is no privacy anymore. Freeze your credit at the big three and get small.
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Sure they do, they’re trying to show off how perfect their lives are 
There should be a reverse social network, called Defacebook. You post pictures of yourself at your worst, like getting out of bed with your hair in a birdsnest, sleeping in your cube at work, waiting in line at the DMV, getting puked on by the baby (or by your drunk friend if you have no baby), etc. You start out connected to everybody, but then eventually winnow down until you’re left with a tight cadre of close-knit friends, with the help of Defacebook’s “People You Might Secretly Loathe” messages. And the best part about it? Because this is the opposite of Facebook, there is no racist bullshit to be found anywhere.
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Most people smile for selfies or family photos which unintentionally wind up online. If they want to scan the internet for your photos, (and their software isn’t that good) it would be a closer match. This seemingly innocuous request also gives them two samples to work with.
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Reading the OP, my assumption was that this disclosure form was getting a lot of traffic and so, being a data-mining company, they thought “this is a great opportunity to build yet another dataset”. So they’re telling you to smile because that will help them amass a set of images of people smiling.
If the same form asked @stephen_schenck to look “surprised”, I would say that pretty much proves my theory.
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I’m not understanding the need for smiling photos, either. One possibility is that the idea is to make you do images on command, to prove that you aren’t just scraping photos from ID photos and such. And that you could be told different expressions, not just smiling. But I really don’t know. They’d better include the submitted photos as part of the info they dump back to you… :-/
And while I’m glad they are trying to verify you, asking for a email of a scan of a DL should be prohibited by law. If that leasks out in the wild anyone can claim to be you, forever, because other companies foolishly demand that kind of scan as proof of identity, and it is no such thing because you can’t verify any of the anti-counterfitting measure in a photo, and you can’t verify that the person who sent the scan in is the same person. I get that the smiling photo thing is an attempt to connect the two biometrically, but since you can’t verify the authenticity of the scan of the DL (and, thus, the photo in the scan), there is no point in trying to compare the DL’s photo to another sent in.
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The screenshots show a domain name of berbix.com. Apparently, you have to give your information to another company in order to get your information from Sift.
Berbix.com describes itself as an online identity checker for matching people to their photo IDs. Apparently, it requires a smart phone. I wonder what they do for Neanderthals like me that don’t have one.
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