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Facebook Images To Get Expiration Date

Posted by timothy on from the reducing-the-awkward-moments dept.

Pickens writes "BBC reports that researchers have created software that gives images an expiration date by tagging them with an encrypted key so that once this date has passed the key stops the images being viewed and copied. Professor Michael Backes, who led development of the X-Pire system, says development work began about 18 months ago as potentially risky patterns of activity on social networks, such as Facebook, showed a pressing need for such a system. 'More and more people are publishing private data to the internet and it's clear that some things can go wrong if it stays there too long,' says Backes. The X-Pire software creates encrypted copies of images and asks those uploading them to give each one an expiration date. Viewing these images requires the free X-Pire browser add-on. When the viewer encounters an encrypted image it sends off a request for a key to unlock it. This key will only be sent, and the image become viewable, if the expiration date has not been passed."

8 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Debunked by thetagger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Slashdot users debunk this scheme as stupid in 5... 4... 3...

    1. Re:Debunked by caffeinemessiah · · Score: 5, Insightful
      This can be debunked quite easily: once an image is decrypted, it is forever decrypted. Alternatively, all I have to do is comment on your post of the image with the key I just downloaded for it while it was still valid. Even more alternatively, I could set up a counter-service to this that stores retrieved keys permanently and hands them out publicly. Unless the service is refreshing the image data every single day with a new key, in which case: (a) they will run out of bandwidth and CPU in a week, (b) they will hit facebook's limits very very soon, and (c) I still have copies of yesterday's encrypted data and yesterday's key.

      Oh yes, and your friends will not be able to see your pictures unless they download a plugin ("huh...what's that??"), and possibly use a specific browser ("huh? why?").

      So yeah, pretty stupid overall. This is another sad attempt at a form of DRM.

      --
      An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
    2. Re:Debunked by caffeinemessiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I should also add: why not just have a service to delete the image automatically from facebook after N days? Encryption is absolutely not needed here and achieves nothing.

      --
      An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
  2. Until... by MrOctogon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Cue the plugin which takes a screen capture of the decrypted image and re posts it in its original form. If you can read it you can copy it forever.

    1. Re:Until... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why would you claim someone is not the brightest of applicants, just because they partied when they were in college? That is exactly the sort of attitude that created this problem in the first place: employers who have this notion that anyone who doesn't conform to the ideal defined by US government propaganda is somehow less desirable. Why does it matter to you that an applicant to whatever sort of job you might employ them for smoked pot when they were in college? Why would you go digging through someone's Facebook profile to find evidence of what sort of partying they did in college?

      --
      Palm trees and 8
  3. no pictures for linux users... by dmbasso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    because you can't lock the print screen out, right?

    --
    `echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
  4. I wish Facebook would expire by PatPending · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wish Facebook would expire... the sooner, the better.

    --
    What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
  5. NEWS! Slashdot Title Wrong by KnownIssues · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am kind of used to Slashdot headlines that exaggerate the original article, but how do you go from a company has made some software that might be useful to social networks *like* Facebook to Facebook is going to get images with expiration dates?