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posted by janrinok on Friday October 04, @09:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the dystopia-is-now! dept.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/harvard-students-make-auto-doxxing-smart-glasses-to-show-need-for-privacy-regs/

Two Harvard students recently revealed that it's possible to combine Meta smart glasses with face image search technology to "reveal anyone's personal details," including their name, address, and phone number, "just from looking at them."

In a Google document, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio explained how they linked a pair of Meta Ray Bans 2 to an invasive face search engine called PimEyes to help identify strangers by cross-searching their information on various people-search databases. They then used a large language model (LLM) to rapidly combine all that data, making it possible to dox someone in a glance or surface information to scam someone in seconds—or other nefarious uses, such as "some dude could just find some girl's home address on the train and just follow them home," Nguyen told 404 Media.

This is all possible thanks to recent progress with LLMs, the students said.

[...] To prevent anyone from being doxxed, the co-creators are not releasing the code, Nguyen said on social media site X. They did, however, outline how their disturbing tech works and how shocked random strangers used as test subjects were to discover how easily identifiable they are just from accessing with the smart glasses information posted publicly online.

[...] But while privacy is clearly important to the students and their demo video strove to remove identifying information, at least one test subject was "easily" identified anyway, 404 Media reported. That test subject couldn't be reached for comment, 404 Media reported.

So far, neither Facebook nor Google has chosen to release similar technologies that they developed linking smart glasses to face search engines, The New York Times reported.

[...] In the European Union, where collecting facial recognition data generally requires someone's direct consent under the General Data Protection Regulation, smart glasses like I-XRAY may not be as big of a concern for people who prefer to be anonymous in public spaces. But in the US, I-XRAY could be providing bad actors with their next scam.

"If people do run with this idea, I think that's really bad," Ardayfio told 404 Media. "I would hope that awareness that we've spread on how to protect your data would outweigh any of the negative impacts this could have."

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Saturday October 05, @01:06AM (2 children)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Saturday October 05, @01:06AM (#1375796)

    I always kind of assumed the "Face" in Facebook meant that photos would be face-recognized for you and your friends, and then the photos would automatically appear in the feed of everyone who was recognized in that photo.

    The kind of database they'd build from that always seemed to be a really powerful voluntarily-populated data-mining network, which is why I'm wary about any photos and information appearing on a social networking site, because anything dropped in there slides straight into investigation and analysis capabilities.

    I'd almost be more comfortable giving a friend a password to a brokerage account, because I know who I trust with what. Feeding into a surveillance system, though ...

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  • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Saturday October 05, @11:17AM (1 child)

    by Unixnut (5779) on Saturday October 05, @11:17AM (#1375820)

    Yes, and the worst thing is even if you are not on Facebook you end up on their database because others upload photos of you and "tag" you. I was never on fb but once I saw a friends fb and there were hundreds of photos of us there, all tagged (those without an account just ended up without a link to their profile).

    It is a losing battle as these companies are not only powerful, but have the full support of the state (who just gets what data they want from the companies)

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by corey on Saturday October 05, @11:30PM

      by corey (2202) on Saturday October 05, @11:30PM (#1375902)

      Yeah we are often (awkwardly/slightly ashamedly) telling family not to put photos of our kids on FB. But they continue to do so ignorantly. It’s weird because although i don’t have a FB account now, I did ten years ago so they know me, but maybe I can try protect my kids.