There are ten years, social media was just beginning to bloom and people share their photos and thoughts with handles family and trusted friends. Ten years later, social media dominates our lives and share every moment through photos instantly slammed from mobile phones that never leave our hands and text updates pushed simultaneously to our Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr feeds is become not only common but expected. If 2014 was the year of the selfie, 2015 will be the year of self-destruction of our privacy? Only time will tell, but recent developments MasterCard and Facebook give people a reason to be concerned about facial recognition technology and how it is implemented by businesses to help make people's lives simpler while at the same time push the anonymity still further outside the realm of possibility.
Selfies are the new security, said MasterCard
The new technology developed by MasterCard for its mobile applications takes selfie and turns of a love-it-or-hate-it feature photography social media in a cup in the form of safety edge. For learners, MasterCard technology will allow users to take a selfie to authorize a purchase. The way it works is when you make a purchase with your card, a notification will appear on your smartphone asking that you take a photo of your face to verify your identity (and you are the one who made the purchase). To help prevent hackers to bypass this safety feature by simply taking a picture of yourself, MasterCard app requires you to flash when taking the photo. The application will also allow users to scan their fingerprints, to pay Apple to confirm transactions.
This announcement came right on the heels of news that the team AI has developed a Facebook facial recognition software so advanced that it can recognize a person, even if their face is not visible . As long as your face has been identified and entered in the system of Facebook, this new technology can purportedly recognize people based on their clothes, body type, hair, posture and pose. Facebook says it has not yet implemented this technology and will not be in countries where people are concerned about its use -. But the fact that there at all is worrying for privacy-minded among us
Why should it be considered a private matter?
We as a nation are not very concerned about our privacy, especially regarding social media. According to a survey conducted NextAdvisor.com the end of 2013, nearly 25% of respondents said that most of their Facebook messages are public. It should be second nature to think before posting and pay attention to security settings available to us by social media sites we use, but many people simply ignore them. People seem to be more lax on security are millennials, and that is what makes them great goals for technology as MasterCard selfie authentication.
This should give people of all ages worry about break this technology, especially Facebook photo verification technology, is what could be done with all this data. MasterCard and Apple have potential access to the fingerprints of people, while Facebook knows exactly what each user looks and can now be even pick them up from a (photo) crowd - if their face is visible. This type of technology looks like something you might see in a futuristic dystopian film, and that should be enough to make people stop and think they want to see such technology becomes widely used. In the wrong hands, these data could be used for identity theft and possibly other malicious purposes.
None of these technologies are not yet implemented. Time will tell what happens with regard to the new powerful recognition technology of Facebook, but it is likely he will be put to use in some form that we like it or not. MasterCard plans to test the authentication of users with 500 selfie before launching its new application on the majority of cardholders. Of course, the biggest thing to remember about these two technologies - and others - is that they are more or less opt-in. You can choose not to use fingerprints or photos authentication tools, and you can also customize your Facebook privacy settings to stop people from tagging you without your approval (and flat-out refuse to label you or download pictures, if you're that paranoid privacy).
Learn more about how you can protect your identity both online and offline reading our blog protect against identity theft.