Identity theft's newest target: your face

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/07/identity-thefts-newest-targe.html

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“For their own good.” At best, paternalistic bullshit, at worst terrifying authoritarianism. This cannot end well.

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There are always counter-measures:
image

Never use an attribute you cannot change yourself (e.g.: face, gait, finger print) as an identifier. Never!

Even now, one need not search long nor hard to find datasets made-up of facial images or finger prints that can be used by criminals and/or cops to access a 3rd party’s accounts - be it facebook or your retirement nest egg.

A remarkably prophetic bit from the sitcom “Better Off Ted” (ten years ago!):

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Archivists can maybe use facial recognition technology to help better catalogue and provide useful metadata for the hundreds of thousands digitized images out there, thus possibly allowing scholarly research keyword accessibility in ways heretofore unknown. This is according to my local friendly archivist; I don’t deal with the cool stuff - I just read the contracts that govern it. Anyway, I’m wondering: Does the nefarious outweigh the possible good? Maybe.

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I now know how Lazarus Long felt when he said it was time to leave this planet.

Hah. Nice to see I’m not the only one to think of that episode. I miss that show.

“The company’s position is that it’s actually the opposite of racist because it’s not targeting black people, it’s just ignoring them. They insist the worst people can call it is indifferent.”

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