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Clearview app lets strangers find your name, info with snap of a photo, report says:
What if a stranger could snap your picture on the sidewalk then use an app to quickly discover your name, address and other details? A startup called Clearview AI has made that possible, and its app is currently being used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies in the US, including the FBI, says a Saturday report in The New York Times.
The app, says the Times, works by comparing a photo to a database of more than 3 billion pictures that Clearview says it's scraped off Facebook, Venmo, YouTube and other sites. It then serves up matches, along with links to the sites where those database photos originally appeared. A name might easily be unearthed, and from there other info could be dug up online.
The size of the Clearview database dwarfs others in use by law enforcement. The FBI's own database, which taps passport and driver's license photos, is one of the largest, with over 641 million images of US citizens.
[...] The startup said in a statement Tuesday that its "technology is intended only for use by law enforcement and security personnel. It is not intended for use by the general public."
Law enforcement officers say they've used the app to solve crimes from shoplifting to child sexual exploitation to murder. But privacy advocates warn that the app could return false matches to police and that it could also be used by stalkers and others. They've also warned that facial recognition technologies in general could be used to conduct mass surveillance.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday January 24 2020, @12:37PM (1 child)
> I don't know anyone who uses it
Fair enough.
Pretty much everyone I know uses it.
> the people I know put only my first name in their contact information anyway
Well done if you are successful at avoiding the darkness. For most people, even in this situation there is uniquely identifiable data (your phone number, typically); and it is trivial to tie this to a real person - for example, VISA sell your data (it is in the Terms of Service).
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @02:01PM
Your phone number isn't necessarily unique to you. Making that assumption would also require that they know you're single, and even then it's not a guarantee, so good luck trying to use the phone number as a unique identifier.
Also, as people approach retirement it's recommended that they either use only a debit card or at most one credit card "for emergencies." The biggest emergency expenses are medical, which just don't exist in countries with single payer health and drug plans with either no copay or a fixed levy on every citizen.
Here, all medical expenses are covered, and everyone pays less than $100 a month for drugs, no matter how much or little they cost, so there aren't any "unexpected " costs.
So really, why is someone approaching retirement still screwing around with 10 credit cards? Debit cards here work just fine for online purchases since they have a CCV number on the back, same as credit cards.
It's not like you're raising a family and juggling all sorts of bills any more. Most of your expenses are fixed or vary within a small range.
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