Your face can give away how you feel about something, but what about your Social Security number? Using a specially developed app that runs facial-recognition software, researchers at Carnegie Mellon claim to have identified complete strangers, as well as some of their personal details, with only a photo.
IT professor Alessandro Acquisti and his research team combined facial-recognition software, cloud computing, and data from social networking sites "to identify individuals online and offline in the physical world."
"Since these technologies are also accessible by end-users, the results foreshadow a future when we all may be recognizable on the street — not just by friends or government agencies using sophisticated devices, but by anyone with a smartphone and Internet connection," they said.
Using a mobile app they developed in-house, the team ran three experiments: identifying people on dating Web sites via photos; identifying students walking across campus using their Facebook profile pictures; and predicting personal interests, and sometimes Social Security numbers, with only a photo.
The app "uses offline and online data to overlay personal and private information over the target's face on the device's screen," researchers said. "The seamless merging of online and offline data that face recognition and social media make possible raises the issue of what privacy will mean in an augmented reality world."
Acquisti did not provide additional details on how exactly someone's Social Security number was revealed from Internet photos. He and his team will be at the Black Hat security conference this week, where more details will be revealed during an August 4 presentation.
"Ultimately, all this access is going to force us to reconsider our notions of privacy," Acquisti said. "It may also affect how we interact with each other. Through natural evolution, human beings have evolved mechanisms to assign and manage trust in face-to-face interactions. Will we rely on our instincts or on our devices, when mobile phones can predict personal and sensitive information about a person?"
Facial recognition has made headlines of late, most recently with regards to Facebook. Back in December, Facebook announced plans for facial-recognition technology intended to make it easier for people to tag photos of friends. Facebook said it would examine newly uploaded photos and compare them to other photos in which you or your friends are tagged in order to make tagging suggestions. In June , however, security firm Sophos expressed concern that facial recognition had been turned on by default.
The move prompted concern from security groups and lawmakers. Several European data protection officials, including those in the U.K. and Ireland, have said they are investigating the technology. Following complaints from the Connecticut attorney general's office, Facebook agreed to run ads on its homepage with more details about the "Tag Suggestions" facial-recognition service.
Last month, Google purchased PittPatt, a technology that could almost certainly be used to automatically tag people in photos and videos. Google has said facial-recognition technology is coming, but not without privacy protection.