Facebook To Fight Revenge Porn by Letting Potential Victims Upload Nudes in Advance (bleepingcomputer.com)

Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Facebook is testing new technology that is designed to help victims of revenge porn acts. It works on a database of file hashes, a cryptographic signature computed for each file. Facebook says that once an abuser tries to upload an image marked as "revenge porn" in its database, its system will block the upload process. This will work for images shared on the main Facebook service, but also for images shared privately via Messenger, Facebook's IM app. The weird thing is that in order to build a database of "revenge porn" file hashes, Facebook will rely on potential victims uploading a copy of the nude photo in advance. This process involves the victim sending a copy of the nude photo to his own account, via Facebook Messenger. This implies uploading a copy of the nude photo on Facebook Messenger, the very same act the victim is trying to prevent. The victim can then report the photo to Facebook, which will create a hash of the image that the social network will use to block further uploads of the same photo.

Comments

This is already avaliable

[pnutjam]

I already have a service that handles this, just send me the pic and I'll handle it....

Re:This is already avaliable

[Major_Disorder]

I already have a service that handles this, just send me the pic and I'll handle it....

I would take you up on this offer. But I would not want to be responsible your your blindness.

Re:This is already avaliable

[fizzer06]

I bet you will.

Re: This is already avaliable

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you care?
Your your already blind.

Re:This is already avaliable

[cayenne8]

I have a QUICK solution to all this, works 100%.

Don't fucking let someone take pictures or video of you naked and/or having sex!!!!

Sheesh....when did something like common sense about not letting someone take pics of you in compromising situations go out the fucking door?

Re:This is already avaliable

[computational super]

I swear I'm only storing the hash code. Honest.

Re:This is already avaliable

[computational super]

Well, I thought it was really just that easy until I realized that the reason nobody had ever taken a naked picture of me was because I was ugly.

Re:This is already avaliable

[religionofpeas]

"We've noticed your hash is kinda small. Would you be interested in some hash-enlargement pills ?"

Re:This is already avaliable

[eneville]

This is no more or less embarrassing than someone getting a tattoo of $current_lover_name. Today we share digitally that which we did physically.

Re:This is already avaliable

[CodeHog]

yup 100% of the time it will work. except the times where it doesn't like when someone has hidden a camera in a bathroom or hotel room or their bedroom...

Re:This is already avaliable

[Lab Rat Jason]

Right? There's NO WAY this could ever go wrong. Nobody from Facebook will ever see them. Nobody will ever hack facebook and steal them, facebook will never sell them to plastic surgeons under a marketing plan for people that need a little "nip" here and there. </sarcasm>

Re:This is already avaliable

[Anonymous Coward]

Proactively upload nude photos to an internet-connected service... What could possibly go wrong?

Re: This is already avaliable

[loufoque]

It's a generation thing.
The new generation is not only completely superficial, but also clueless about privacy in technology.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Oswald McWeany]

Well, I thought it was really just that easy until I realized that the reason nobody had ever taken a naked picture of me was because I was ugly.

Don't feel so down on yourself. I've taken plenty of naked pictures of you.

Re:This is already avaliable

[lq_x_pl]

In this case, the potential victim does not have access to the photo to pre-emptively upload. Doesn't apply to the context of this discussion. :-/

Re:This is already avaliable

[Oswald McWeany]

This is no more or less embarrassing than someone getting a tattoo of $current_lover_name. Today we share digitally that which we did physically.

Don't be so down on yourself. I've take plenty of nude photos of you through your bedroom window.

Re:This is already avaliable

[networkBoy]

Well in this particular case since they're expecting you to upload your nudies that implies you took a selfie or some such... in which case I'd like to add an addendum to GP:

and for $DIETY sake, don't take nudies and send them to someone!

Also I have a tangential question (sorta reverse revenge porn):
1) Minor takes nude selfie and sends it to target (say hated step parent).
2) Reports target for being in possession of CP.
3) now what?

Re:This is already avaliable

[Oswald McWeany]

yup 100% of the time it will work. except the times where it doesn't like when someone has hidden a camera in a bathroom or hotel room or their bedroom...

Or they accidentally upload the photo to their feed instead of the protection service.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Oswald McWeany]

#hashshaming

Re:This is already avaliable

[networkBoy]

Seriously, they could release a "restrict pic" app that you could use to generate the hashes locally and then upload just the hash, but...
All the revenger has to do is change some metadata, or a pixel, and BANG! new hash.
Making this all relatively pointless.

Re: This is already avaliable

[gx5000]

NO kidding, and they're paying Big Brother to spy on them by buying, even fighting over the tech themselves...
Have to retire soon, this is getting too stupid, everywhere you look.

Re: This is already avaliable

[dreamchaser]

You left out 'self-absorbed' and 'narcissistic'.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of that website where you could enter you credit card number to check if it was leaked to the internet....

Re:This is already avaliable

[lgw]

It's probably an image signature, not literally a hash. But yeah, if the real intent was as stated, they'd release an app that uploads just the signature. This plan can only end in lulz.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Theaetetus]

I have a QUICK solution to all this, works 100%.

Don't fucking let someone take pictures or video of you naked and/or having sex!!!!

Sheesh....when did something like common sense about not letting someone take pics of you in compromising situations go out the fucking door?

Yes, I suppose that's a reasonable solution, if you never want to receive sexy pictures or video from a significant other. As most people would like to receive such, then blaming the victim and discouraging the practice would seem to be counter to most folk's interests. But not yours, I guess.

Re:This is already avaliable

[computational super]

Dad?

Re:This is already avaliable

[networkBoy]

I assumed the same (signature) but TFA actually points out: "Cryptographic Hash".
so...
I still assume signature.

Re:This is already avaliable

[thereitis]

My guess is they need nudes of people in large masses for some big data/advertising angle and this is just a cover story to get people to send them in. I know FB mentioned getting into medical related topics at one point, so that could be it. I can't believe how much disdain they seem to have for their userbase.

Re:This is already avaliable

[redmasq]

I would agree. If I were doing it, I would probably scale the images to a fixed set of different very low resolutions and create a histogram of segments each resulting image. If there is a more than an arbitrary number of fuzzy matches to each histogram, it's likely the same image. The image identification would be independent of the file hash and if enough (overlapping) segments, it may be possible match cropped images to uncropped with very few false positives. Beyond that, feature identification might be a good, albeit processing intensive, approach that possibly could be combined with the former as a second-stage. Those are, however, just ideas that come to mind to approach the problem.

Re:This is already avaliable

[AdamStarks]

A different breed of revenge porn, eh? Where the subject is not the victim?

Re:This is already avaliable

[boudie2]

My wife was afraid of the dark. Then she saw me naked. Now she's afraid of the light.
Rodney Dangerfield

Re:This is already avaliable

[ShanghaiBill]

Don't be a dumbass; that's already illegal.

The depends on the jurisdiction. In America, surreptitious audio recordings are illegal without the consent of at least one party, but hidden cameras often are not.

Re:This is already avaliable

[greenfruitsalad]

Also, in UK, Facebook could be charged with possession of child pornography and the teen uploading the photo with distribution

Re:This is already avaliable

[Anonymous Coward]

Also I have a tangential question (sorta reverse revenge porn):
1) Minor takes nude selfie and sends it to target (say hated step parent).
2) Reports target for being in possession of CP.
3) now what?

How it works in the US:
3) Police breaks down door and drags target to jail
4) Police finds evidence on phone
5) Depending on how rich/connected/white target is
    a) not: target gets charged with possession of CP and goes to jail. Target is put on list of sex offenders.
    b) very: target's lawyer points out the minor sent it, target is innocent. Minor is sent to juvie for distributing CP. Minor is put on list of sex offenders.
    c) somewhat: (a) and (b)

Re: This is already avaliable

[Falconnan]

Has said every aging generation to every up-and-coming generation since time immemorial. A large part of the problem is puritanical culture, frankly. Nudity should not be as big a deal as it is.

Re:This is already avaliable

[cayenne8]

Yes, I suppose that's a reasonable solution, if you never want to receive sexy pictures or video from a significant other. As most people would like to receive such, then blaming the victim and discouraging the practice would seem to be counter to most folk's interests.

I dunno...I've had a lot of relationships over my years, some long term, some not....there's been a LOT of fucking in them all, and yet I've never once felt the need to let myself be photographed in the nude, nor have I taken or asked for pictures of the girls I've been with.....frankly, since I value privacy and don't want anyone else to be in control of my nude likeness....it has never occurred to me to ask for her to send me nudes.

I prefer to see her naked in person, you know?

Perhaps it is a generational thing...but hey, my advice still works.

If you're stupid enough to participate in that stuff...then you get what you deserve.

Re:This is already avaliable

[plopez]

Compromising position? Just do what I do, do not consider them compromising.

WTF is wrong with people? Showing war movies or action movies where people get blown away is OK, but if you were to show a married couple having sex to create a child it would be considered "dirty".

We live in a death culture.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a better idea: everyone should upload tons of non-pornographic images of things their future ex is likely to post, so that everyone will get banned from Facebook for posting revenge porn when they post:

* a picture of their pet
* a picture of their best friend's face
* a picture of their favorite food

etc

Re: This is already avaliable

[guruevi]

You can hash images in a way that cropping or resizing or even blurring/resolution changes still generate a valid hash. Sort of like Soundex for images.

The problem with hashing on the client side is that it will get abused by anyone that wants to remove any sort of content. Regardless of the bots being able to match it, a human still has to decide whether something is in violation of any particular rule.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Theaetetus]

" if you never want to receive sexy pictures or video from a significant other. As most people would like to receive such"

That's a pretty big assumption there! I get along fine without sending nudy pics to my wife, and vice versa.

The rest of us appreciate them, though, so pass on our thanks.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Stephen Battleware]

I don't care how liberal minded you think you are, nor how repressed you think I am, I just don't want to see it, thank you very much.

Re:This is already avaliable

[whyyisthissohard]

The solution isn't for the real problem though. The REAL problem is that these people's irresponsibility and lack of self-accounting is being validated by institutions.

Re:This is already avaliable

[reboot246]

I suspect somebody at Facebook is going to have a massive porn collection.

Re: This is already avaliable

[whyyisthissohard]

It's not puritanical in any way. Nudity objectively implies availability for sex. Welcome to 10,000+ years ago.

But polynesian tribes etc.!

Guess what? Most of us aren't polynesians. These tribal people did not erect western civilization. These tribal people had less need of clothing for warmth in their habitat.
Humans need clothes to survive. There are only certain occasions when clothes are taken off. Traditionally the most important one if not the most common is for mating. This is ingrained in our brains.

And besides you have no point whatsoever, because these photos are invariably taken in a mood of arousal, signalling a very clear context.

But my pet theory!

Not so "insightful".

Re: This is already avaliable

[Brockmire]

Good luck. Until they die, there's new pictures you have to upload everyday. So instead of avoiding a couple of pics, you'll now become the world's expert having seen the most pictures of them. Fucking idiot.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Stephen Battleware]

Just put facebook dot com and all Facebook's related snitch domains that track people all over the Internet - you can find the rather long list online - into your hosts file pointed to 0.0.0.0 and be done with them.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Major_Disorder]

This is no more or less embarrassing than someone getting a tattoo of $current_lover_name.

This is why I now exclusively date women named Edith. I admit it does limit me a bit, but have you looked at the price of laser tattoo removal.

Re:This is already avaliable

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Dear Facebook sysAdmin, here's the photos that my ex may try to disseminate as revenge on Facebook. Please don't look at them yourself. Yours sincerely, Goatse.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Hognoxious]

Since TFA is from bleepingcomputer it could be almost anything. They might think it's a very cold casserole.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Altrag]

Goatse and tubgirl have been around for a while..

Re:This is already avaliable

[Altrag]

Sure it works 100%, but its also the digital equivalent of abstinence-only. People like their sexy times and often don't think about or care about consequences when they're in the moment. Abstinence-only arguments basically go against human nature and therefore will never ever work in practice, even if they might in theory.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Altrag]

Presumably they wouldn't be keeping copies of the photos -- just their hashes for comparison purposes. And in this case, specifically because of the situation you mention and similar possibilities there's a good chance that the company will comply (any particular employee may break the rules and say store a handful of pictures on their local PC drive or something but it almost certainly wouldn't be company policy.)

I wouldn't put it past them to run the photos through their facial recognition and whatnot before purging them though, just in case you had onlookers they could maybe identify and link to your profile in some manner..

Re: This is already avaliable

[Anonymous Coward]

People have some fucked up views on nudity. I guy I know who's a conservative, commenting on some kind of nudity in public protest/event thing, was going on about how "it's their own fault if they get raped!". Seriously, WTF?

Re:This is already avaliable

[Altrag]

Problem isn't the victim considering them compromising. The problem is the victim's family, friends, coworkers, boss, etc considering them compromising.

Really though, its a generational thing to some extent. By the time the children of the millennials are in their 40s or 50s and running the world, so many of them will have nudes, stupid social media posts, etc out in the world that its going to necessarily be a non-issue or for examples employers won't be able to find any employees that fit their "internet purity" conditions.

Its only a problem right now when the generation doing the hiring never really had to deal with these kind of things while the generation looking to be hired don't really care that much because everyone they know does it. Its the intersection of those two worlds where everything hits the fan.. well, in a generalized sense of course -- there will always be exceptions obviously.

Re:This is already avaliable

[plopez]

Then don't look.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Altrag]

Does it matter? Most of the time these things are already being sent via text message, Snapchat, or some other service that could potentially be intercepting and storing them. I mean there was that whole snappening thing a couple years ago that demonstrated exactly how ephemeral those photos weren't.

The fact that one more faceless corporation and its employees in a chain of faceless corporations can see your junk is a minor consideration compared to the risk of your friends, family, potential employers, etc seeing it.

Re:This is already avaliable

[networkBoy]

/win

Re:This is already avaliable

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never once felt the need to let myself be photographed in the nude, nor have I taken or asked for pictures of the girls I've been with

You win at life. When you get to the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter won't be asking what you did to reduce poverty or whether you helped cure cancer. No, he'll ask you how many times you've been seen naked on the internet. And when you look him square in the eye and say "None, sir, none at all!" Well, most likely little baby Jesus himself will come down to congratulate and welcome you.

Re:This is already avaliable

[AdamStarks]

My apologies, I didn't realize we'd broadened the scope of relevant media to include art.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Tuidjy]

I would also take you up on that offer. But could you please explain to me, first, how you deal with the things with which Facebook clearly does not:
- how do you avoid charges of moving and storing child porn if the user is underage?
- how do you make sure that minor changes to the original picture do not produce completely different signatures?
- how do you make sure that none of your employees have access to the originals?
- how do you make sure people upload only pictures in which they are the subject?
- how do you make sure that the mechanism is not used to suppress legitimate pictures?
- etc, etc, etc.

What could possibly go wrong?!

Re:This is already avaliable

[Hognoxious]

Alternatively ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs...

Re:This is already avaliable

[Stephen Battleware]

It's ag'in the law, not my problem.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Stephen Battleware]

And I'm quite content with that.

Re:This is already avaliable

[antdude]

Here you go: https://photos.smugmug.com/Ant... ... ;)

Re:This is already avaliable

[CSMoran]

- how do you avoid charges of moving and storing child porn if the user is underage?

By computing the hashes client-side and transmitting and storing only the hashes, obviously.

- how do you make sure that minor changes to the original picture do not produce completely different signatures?

Wavelet transform. Compute hashes in wavelet space.

- how do you make sure that none of your employees have access to the originals?

By computing the hashes client-side and storing only the hashes, obviously.

Re:This is already avaliable

[pnutjam]

That actually varies by state, some are 2 party consent and some are 1 party consent for audio recording.
And there have been incidents of people upset about being video recorded who couldn't do anything about it until they realized audio was recorded as well.

Re:This is already avaliable

[pnutjam]

damn! Dat thorax...!

Re: This is already avaliable

[TheRaven64]

The old generation is also clueless about privacy in technology, they just can't get the technology to work well enough to invade their privacy this thoroughly.

I wish this were a joke...

Re: This is already avaliable

[jeffb (2.718)]

It's not puritanical in any way. Nudity objectively implies availability for sex.

Wow. Just wow.

There are only certain occasions when clothes are taken off. Traditionally the most important one if not the most common is for mating.

Not very big on bathing, then, are we?

Re:This is already avaliable

[antdude]

Ain't I sexy? ;)

Re:This is already avaliable

[Tuidjy]

- how do you avoid charges of moving and storing child porn if the user is underage?

By computing the hashes client-side and transmitting and storing only the hashes, obviously.

So far, so good. But of course, Facebook did not go this way, i.e. no client side application to generate hashes.

- how do you make sure that minor changes to the original picture do not produce completely different signatures?

Wavelet transform. Compute hashes in wavelet space.

Hmm. If I have the client side application that generates the hashes, I will be able to easily experiment with minor modifications, and can automate the process that turns minor changes into significant hash variations. Especially by defining areas of the original which must be preserved, and others which can be altered.

And of course, by using wavelet transforms, you will make it really easy to automatically generate images that suppress valid images from your competitors, whose who say what you dislike, those who post incriminating information about your nefarious activities, etc.

Hell, if this is implemented, I will try to be the first to market a program to take advantage of the problems with your approach.

Re:This is already avaliable

[ImprovOmega]

- how do you make sure that minor changes to the original picture do not produce completely different signatures?

Wavelet transform. Compute hashes in wavelet space.

I'm not sure I understand how wavelets are going to help you with this. It's really not hard at all to modify an image such that the wavelet transform would be markedly different (heck, a brightening/darkening filter would do the trick, especially if you were only hashing the Y-Channel of an image). Unless you're using wavelets in a way I've never heard of before. One of my former jobs was developing image compression software so I have a reasonable working knowledge of how wavelet transforms work and I've personally implemented several variations of them.

Re:This is already avaliable

[CSMoran]

I'm not sure I understand how wavelets are going to help you with this. It's really not hard at all to modify an image such that the wavelet transform would be markedly different (heck, a brightening/darkening filter would do the trick, especially if you were only hashing the Y-Channel of an image). Unless you're using wavelets in a way I've never heard of before. One of my former jobs was developing image compression software so I have a reasonable working knowledge of how wavelet transforms work and I've personally implemented several variations of them.

I'm familiar with wavelets, but I don't have the kind of hands-on experience you say you have. I was basing my statement on the fact that a) google search by image seems to work OK, b) a slashdot article from maybe 2-3 years back which, AFAIR, presented quite a robust way of fingerprinting images that was (said to be) difficult to fool with "minor changes". This mentioned some kind of wavelet transform. I'm not vouching for how well it works in practice, maybe I was too optimistic in my assessment.

Re:This is already avaliable

[CSMoran]

So far, so good. But of course, Facebook did not go this way, i.e. no client side application to generate hashes.

In addressing your worries I was thinking in terms of how this could be solved, not in terms of how this is being handled currently.

Hmm. If I have the client side application that generates the hashes, I will be able to easily experiment with minor modifications, and can automate the process that turns minor changes into significant hash variations. Especially by defining areas of the original which must be preserved, and others which can be altered.

In transform space, I guess. In the bitmap these would be more like "intangible features" than areas. I agree in principle the hashes could be fooled, though.

And of course, by using wavelet transforms, you will make it really easy to automatically generate images that suppress valid images from your competitors, whose who say what you dislike, those who post incriminating information about your nefarious activities, etc.

Hell, if this is implemented, I will try to be the first to market a program to take advantage of the problems with your approach.

But that just returns to point five in your original statement ("how do you make sure that the mechanism is not used to suppress legitimate pictures?") which I did not take issue with and continue not to.

Re:This is already avaliable

[Tuidjy]

Oh, I agree that there is a perfectly good way to solve any single one of the issues I pointed out. It's only when you try to solve them all at the same time that you run into problems which look insurmountable to me.

Re: This is already avaliable

[Falconnan]

Your existence in the high school locker room must have been very traumatic.

That said, humanity is not tied to ethnicity. Our natural state is, in fact, nudity; the foundation of humanity exists upon our animal nature. My point is simply that nudity and sex being so "taboo" or "naughty" is the origin of a great deal of our societal problems. This seems to come from a lack of respect for other people's choices.

Sorry, but if a woman trusts me with nude photos of herself, I'm going to hold them in the highest of confidences. If she trusted me with them, it says more about me if I choose to disseminate those than it does about her trusting me. Intentionally sharing them may or may not be criminal in some jurisdictions, but it would imply I was scum were I to do so.

Re: This is already avaliable

[whyyisthissohard]

bathing traditionally is rarely done. In fact what benefit is there? It strips your external microbiome of its substrate.

There was a story here on slashdot about a company trying to recreate the human external microbiome.

The truth is there is supposed to be a continuous cycle of bacteria from mouth through the guts to the anus to the skin and back into the mouth. Go ahead and squirm at the "disgustingness" of it, but it's how you were built to operate.

Re: This is already avaliable

[whyyisthissohard]

In fact there is no evidence that our "natural state" is nudity.
Perhaps humans lost their fur because they found the skins of animals more useful. There is no consensus as to how and why we did lose our fur after all.

Origin of what problems? People can make lots of choices that aren't respectable. Why would it say more about you? What is this unit we are measuring? Why would you be scum? It's your picture that she gave you. If she breaks the covenant of trust with promiscuous behavior then what obligation do you have to her? Why?

Women are finding there is some blowback for promiscuous behavior and you and many others are scrambling to excuse them. You are probably one of the types that got ignored by girls and now falls all over yourself to attend to their whims whether or not they are justified or good. High school (locker room) indeed....a little projection on your part no doubt.
I truly fear for children who are raised by submissive fathers. Talk about 'societal problems'.

Re:This is already avaliable

[maelkum]

These are all good ideas, and yes - quite obvious. You can bet Facebook will go the other route.

Re:This is already avaliable

[xystren]

Great until facebook decides you haven't been posting and participating in their social network and they use the nudes to blackmail you to participate more.

"Facebook has noticed you haven't posted in a while. Would you like us to post one of your uploaded pictures to start the conversation? [Yes] [Yes] [Close = Yes]"

Re:This is already avaliable

[strikethree]

yup 100% of the time it will work. except the times where it doesn't like when someone has hidden a camera in a bathroom or hotel room or their bedroom...

Or they accidentally upload the photo to their feed instead of the protection service.

In situations like this, I always ask: "Why do they need the photo itself? Can't they just release some software to upload the hash?"

Re: This is already avaliable

[Falconnan]

Were you born clothed?

Re: This is already avaliable

[whyyisthissohard]

Did you survive the ice age naked?

Re: This is already avaliable

[Falconnan]

As for the rest... Respectable to whom? Who adjudicates "promiscuous" or not? Is it binary, or defined by degrees?

Further, if the woman I am/was with violated my trust, I dismiss her from my life. I expect her to do the same if I behave that way. That you see treating women as human beings who have the right to control the use of their own image as a problem indicates to me a great deal of insecurity. This takes me back to the trauma thought.

Re: This is already avaliable

[whyyisthissohard]

" Who adjudicates "promiscuous" or not?"
The people following the rules of society that you liberals destroyed....you know, sex before marriage. Sex with more than one man ever.

"(retarded moralizing of your personal beliefs blah blah blah)....have the right to control the use of their own image"
no they don't, what about this do you not get.
You can't restrict other people from communicating and transferring their personal property because it hurts your retarded feelings.

God you're stupid.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Major_Disorder]

I know they "claim" they will not keep the pictures, but only a hash of the image. But do you really trust Facebook that much?

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

They should allow the potential victim to upload the hash, and not the image.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[sanosuke001]

This is what I was expecting the summary to say as what they're actually doing is ridiculous. However, the abuse possible for both seems like this just won't work. Either you're posting nudes (regardless of what Facebook says that doesn't seem smart) or someone will find a way to insert every possible hash (or a large chunk of random ones) into their system and it will flag every possible image...

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[gnick]

But do you really trust Facebook that much?

Nobody trusts FB. At least nobody should. I don't see any motivation for them to store the image, so I'd like to think they wouldn't, but they do make a habit of collecting everything they can get their mitts on.

If these hashes work the same way as the hashes I'm familiar with, circumvention will require the sophistication to make a minor alteration to a single pixel.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

But do you really trust Facebook that much?

Nobody trusts FB. At least nobody should. I don't see any motivation for them to store the image, so I'd like to think they wouldn't, but they do make a habit of collecting everything they can get their mitts on.

If these hashes work the same way as the hashes I'm familiar with, circumvention will require the sophistication to make a minor alteration to a single pixel.

I doubt it, probably like this: https://www.codeproject.com/articles/374386/simple-image-comparison-in-net
similar to what I use in my code

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Oswald McWeany]

I know they "claim" they will not keep the pictures, but only a hash of the image. But do you really trust Facebook that much?

Won't take long before the police will pay Facebook to ID the corpses they find.

"Detective Hathaway, run this birthmark that looks like a camel through facebook and see who has a camel shaped birthmark on their arse"

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[datavirtue]

Don't worry...they are hiring 7000 people who have been vetted to monitor the system and preserve privacy for the new feature. It would have been really funny had we learned about this before the congressional testimonies.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[computational super]

Actually I distrust Facebook so much that I'm pretty sure they already have a few gigabytes of naked pictures of everybody, so uploading another one won't make much difference.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[gnick]

The link you provided describes a method for finding differences between two images. Using those two images. It says nothing about comparing images based on a hash.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[Pascoea]

Really? You honestly thing a company with virtually unlimited resources didn't think of that? (Or the Parent's "changing a pixel" comment?) I realize that what they are doing doesn't follow the definition of "hash" as we traditionally think about it, where changing one bit in the source changes the hash. But I'm pretty sure FB didn't just get outsmarted by two ACs on Slashdot.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[loufoque]

It's not that kind of hash, you doofus.
It's the signature that is computed by machine learning computer vision and that contains the weights associated with each feature deemed relevant for that application.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[thomn8r]

My penis is a thing of beauty. Everybody should see it!

Not everyone can afford an electron microscope

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because English speakers know that "male" pronouns convey no information about gender. English is gender neutral unless female pronouns are used. So, when you want to make neutral statements you don't use female pronouns.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[interkin3tic]

But do you really trust Facebook that much?

If I'm being logical about it, maybe?

Name one PR problem that could cause people to leave Facebook? Evidently showing propaganda for hostile governments trying to destroy us from within didn't generate much heat. But if there's one thing Americans get upset about, it's boobs being shown.

I'd imagine FB is smart enough to realize they might actually get in trouble for letting nude pics they were trusted with slip.

My opinion might be different if anyone at all WANTED to see my nude ass...

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[srmalloy]

And Facebook won't 'accidentally' use the nude image as a picture when sending out 'potential friend' notices to other people after datamining your shadow profile...

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[GameboyRMH]

The user would need to install their own perceptual hash tool, because a cryptographic hash would be trivially easy to get a false positive on: just flip, add, or remove a single bit on the file.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[thegarbz]

But do you really trust Facebook that much?

I do. But I wouldn't use their service anyway because matching hashes is utterly frigging useless. Mind you this from Facebook who's copyright infringement detection system can be defeated by altering the speed of the clip by 1%

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Dutch Gun]

Image hashes typically work in a way such that you can find an image even if minor alterations have been made, such as if you re-compress them, change formats, alter a single pixel, etc. From what I understand, it often involves analysis of the color histogram used in initial searches, plus a tiny thumbnail for direct comparison, which would generally be too small to recognize a specific person. This lets you do "fuzzy" matching, unlike a hash like CRC32 or SHA1 which only can find exact matches.

I agree that this has all sorts of psychological barriers. "Hey, I'm worried about revenge porn, so I'm going to upload all my nude pics I shared with my ex-boyfriend to Facebook for analysis. You know, Facebook, the company that scans all my personal data for profit."

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[Eichmil]

I'm going to upload all the hashes to all my photos. I have 2^256 of them. I've sorted the hashes in numerical order.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[jpschaaf]

I think you're missing the point. The point is that facebook would need to store more than just a hash to accomplish their goal -- they need ways to deal with the image being scaled, rotated, run through a filter, etc. In other words... they need to keep a likeness of the original image.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[networkBoy]

Any other algo that could detect "soft" changes to the image would have to store something that is not a hash, but is rather a (basically) reversible image map.
I suppose you could just edge detect the image and store that data as a "hash" and any other image that had the same edges at the same relative offsets from each other would be blocked, but I think that could increase the false positive rate.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[lgw]

The point is that facebook would need to store more than just a hash to accomplish their goal -- they need ways to deal with the image being scaled, rotated, run through a filter, etc. In other words... they need to keep a likeness of the original image.

There are simple image signature algorithms that are stable across all those transformations (unless the filter is extreme), but will still make random collisions unlikely. Old technology at this point.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[geekmux]

Really? You honestly thing a company with virtually unlimited resources didn't think of that? (Or the Parent's "changing a pixel" comment?) I realize that what they are doing doesn't follow the definition of "hash" as we traditionally think about it, where changing one bit in the source changes the hash. But I'm pretty sure FB didn't just get outsmarted by two ACs on Slashdot.

I'm pretty sure you don't know who Achilles was.

"The victim can then report the photo to Facebook, which will create a hash of the image that the social network will use to block further uploads of the same photo."

Sure as hell looks like Facebooks heel is showing. This is likely a best-effort service. It sure as shit isn't priority #1 for Facebook, and thus there are not "unlimited" resources.

And IF there were additional controls put in place to filter, it would mean Facebook would need to store the actual image. Cue the disgruntled FB employee and darknet dump in 3...2...

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[FuzzyDaddy2]

There data set isnâ(TM)t nearly big enough to get a collision. For a 256 but hash you need something like 2^128 tries to get a collision. If every person on earth upload 1 picture a second for 10 years, you get 2^61. If you go to the age of the universe, you get 2^91.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[bobbied]

They should allow the potential victim to upload the hash, and not the image.

THIS!

However... Everybody knows that you can alter the hash on an image in any number of ways, including simply converting it to another image format or scale it.

You also know Facebook won't make this happen. The whole idea was to drive a new website with free content.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Knuckles]

They should allow the potential victim to upload the hash, and not the image.

We can't even get a judge to understand what a hash is, you expect the average Facebook mouth-breather to know what the fuck you're talking about?

They obviously wouldn't have to deal with the technical details and therefore wouldn't have to know

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Knuckles]

Facebook has other uses for nude pics, it's not just about the danger of a leak.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I know they "claim" they will not keep the pictures, but only a hash of the image. But do you really trust Facebook that much?

Average Facebook user: Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.

(a tip of the hat to Futurama)

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[gnick]

It wasn't real complicated, but the motivation was very different. Is a low-res copy of the image a "hash"? I'm willing to call it one, but it grays the line. It would wash out the most minor changes. It would give a similarity score. Is a high similarity as good as a match? I'm used to hashes that either match or don't, although I'm not married to the idea. There's no option to flag it for human review if the images aren't stored. Changing a single pixel would give a high (possibly perfect) similarity score. Flipping the image horizontally would obliterate the similarity using this method - A histogram might be more useful there. Using both might require our evil-doer to apply a filter. A low-res copy of the pic would help, but not remotely solve the problem.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[dissy]

Otherwise, what are they doing to do, make you prove you own the image? "Sorry, I need you to uhh, verify this genitalia is yours...."

That sounds to me like even more reason to suspect Facebook keeps the original image, just in case anyone there needs to verify the image uploaded really is a nude body instead of random persons profile portrait.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation please. Hashes are very fragile, that is why we use them to detect data errors and securely store passwords.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You honestly thing a company with virtually unlimited resources didn't think of that?

Yes. It's facebook.

Were you not around when we discussed the Facebook mobile app having more lines of code than an average Linux installation?

I realize that what they are doing doesn't follow the definition of "hash" as we traditionally think about it

Not using freshman CS language properly provides all the information necessary to determine the competency of Facebook developers.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[ghoul]

The real question to ask is do you trust every 19 year old intern working at Facebook to not be tempted with this treasure trove?

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[Brockmire]

Some people smoke it.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[Brockmire]

What? Fuck no. All references to "he" is exactly understood as one thing, male. You say shit like "they" or "them", if you want to be ambiguous. I will give you, "Guys" can mean groups including female. But not fucking "he" .

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[lgw]

Citation please. Hashes are very fragile, that is why we use them to detect data errors and securely store passwords.

The initial papers were published from Stanford, quite a few years ago (and so are hidden form the internet). There were a few startups, back in the day, around this.

These signatures are based around decomposing anything: image, video, ,text document, etc, into a series of signals (e.g., series of words in a doc), then hashing each signal to a bit in your signature, then accumulating a weight for that bit based on how common the signal is among similar documents.

The devil is in the details, of course, but you can see how resilient these signatures are but looking at attempts to evade YouTube's contentID system.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[jethr0211]

Sending images that include your face that you don't ever want to be associated with your identity to a company that is investing millions in facial recognition tech to identify users? What could go wrong? And that boyfriend who posts a slightly cropped image won't be blocked using hash matching.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[Pascoea]

Oh, never said it was a good idea. I'm just implying that FB has probably figured out some pretty clever ways to weed out "duplicate" images, even without keeping the actual image on hand in any readable form.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Altrag]

No. Do I prefer Facebook seeing compromising pictures of me rather than my employer? Definitely.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[YukariHirai]

Sure, that'll change it so it isn't exact, but good duplicate image detection can deal with differences in format and resolution by looking for something that's similar enough. Even the so-so software I occasionally run over my desktop wallpaper collection to weed out duplicates does it pretty well, even if there is the odd false positive.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Hognoxious]

Is a low-res copy of the image a "hash"? I'm willing to call it one, but it grays the line.

I see what you did there. If I squint a bit.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Stephen Battleware]

No one in their right mind would trust FB by now. It's not much more than a time waster and an avenue to a "gotcha".

In business, if the opportunity to use FB in a purposeful manner that would further goals, then maybe cautiously crafted use of the thing. But even there, I'd venture it is best to generally avoid the it.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[dotgain]

The initial papers were published from Stanford, quite a few years ago (and so are hidden form the internet).

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~lowe/keypoints/ Here's a page for SIFT, and early image keypoint detector

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[lgw]

There's a good wikipedia page on SIFT as well, but note that it's one of many.

There was also a lot of classified work done in this area (and there still is AFAIK) ahead of what's publicly known, as being able to steer a weapon (with very limited compute) into a target based on a photo of the target is desirable (which would be a tilted/rotated/differently lit/etc picture to be matched with a camera stream). Heck, just determining the exact coordinates of a picture taken from a plane is a big deal.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[david_thornley]

So, how do you tell if the hash is of something potentially objectionable? What's to stop me from creating lots of hashes of famous paintings, for example, and uploading them? How about if I destroy the Internet by uploading hash after hash of cute cat pictures, so they can never be seen on Facebook?

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[david_thornley]

That's not how English is commonly used or understood. From a descriptivist's viewpoint, that's not how English works. It's one of "da rulez" that became established a long time ago, such as not splitting an infinitive, that turn out not to work well in practice.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[Carewolf]

Really? You honestly thing a company with virtually unlimited resources didn't think of that? (Or the Parent's "changing a pixel" comment?) I realize that what they are doing doesn't follow the definition of "hash" as we traditionally think about it, where changing one bit in the source changes the hash. But I'm pretty sure FB didn't just get outsmarted by two ACs on Slashdot.

Well, the YouTube video ID for instance, is easily defeated by picture-in-picture, or sufficient noise on the image.

April Fools Day on Slashdot?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

April Fools Day on Slashdot?

Why not a Porn version of Wikipedia?

[Hylandr]

What's wrong with putting all the nudes of every person on facebook on a database ?

What could go Equifax?

PSA

[Gilgaron]

This reminds me of the humorous PSA where some teenage boys are offering free mammograms...

Now you can let zuckerberg oogle your nasty bits

[Jarwulf]

and sell it to advertisers and the government along with all the other PI you give him. For your protection of course.

Labia shape hash!

[HornWumpus]

You all laughed at me when I started building my labia shape hash algorithm, modded me funny.

Now you see how serious this issue is.

Ladies, send in your labia prints. Otherwise there can be no guarantee you'll be notified.

Next: Unlock you phone with the new 'snail trails' app.

Re:Labia shape hash!

[bobbied]

This problem would be much easier to manage if we all just tattooed QR codes on our junk.

Mark of the beast then?

Why not compute hash locally?

[pz]

The public reaction to this is understandably somewhat muted and off-put. Why upload nude photos to Facebook, indeed? The claim is that they will compute a hash of the image, and store that to prevent future uploads.

If that is really the case, when why not compute the hash locally on the user's machine, and upload only the hash? Surely that can be done on essentially all modern hardware from cell phone to desktop in a reasonable amount of time.

Re:Why not compute hash locally?

[queazocotal]

Indeed - that'd be the only sane way to do it if you cared at all about privacy.
I forsee them analysing the images and following relationship status to advertise tattoo removal.

Re:Why not compute hash locally?

[HornWumpus]

Hashing program is named pkzip.

Re:Why not compute hash locally?

[Anonymous Coward]

The public reaction to this is understandably somewhat muted and off-put. Why upload nude photos to Facebook, indeed? The claim is that they will compute a hash of the image, and store that to prevent future uploads.

If that is really the case, when why not compute the hash locally on the user's machine, and upload only the hash? Surely that can be done on essentially all modern hardware from cell phone to desktop in a reasonable amount of time.

I see a potential issue: if you can just upload any old hash of a picture, you could perform a sort of image DOS against arbitrary images

Re:Why not compute hash locally?

[corychristison]

I'm curious what kind of algorithm they are using for this.

Traditional hashing will hash the entirety of the image. A simple work around of simply resizing or cropping the image before uploading will get around it.

Unless they mean fingerprinting. Fingerprinting != Hashing.

Re:Why not compute hash locally?

[bgarcia]

If that is really the case, when why not compute the hash locally on the user's machine, and upload only the hash?

Because then it becomes much easier to reverse-engineer Facebook's hashing algorithm, allowing an attacker to make small changes to an image to result in a different hash.

Re:Why not compute hash locally?

[datavirtue]

All the public will get from this is "naked chicks" and "hash." There probably will not be much backlash.

Re: Why not compute hash locally?

[Lab Rat Jason]

Better yet, write a script that pulls every image from the white house/oval office feed and uploads it as a porn hash. Now we're solving some problems!

Re:Why not compute hash locally?

[Anonymous Coward]

We just saw an article related to this. The hash is something like Microsoft's image identifier hash they acquired when they bought... ???...
It basically works like this.
Image is resized to a standard size 1020x768 I think
converted to black and white
edge detect applied
at this point Trained AI is supposed to be quite accurate in identifying matching photos
this works even if you resize the photo or color adjust it

Seems like there will be gaping holes to be discovered in this method though.

Re:Why not compute hash locally?

[swillden]

If that is really the case, when why not compute the hash locally on the user's machine, and upload only the hash?

Cool. I hate CNN's fake news. I'm going to write a script that takes every image from every CNN story and uploads the hashes. Sharing of CNN stories on Facebook is going to be shut down.

s/CNN/whatever you hate/

The obvious corollary here is that Facebook needs not just the hashes but also the original image, so they can determine whether it's a real nude photo. Algorithms can do that pretty well, so Facebook may be able to arrange that no human ever needs to see the image... but there's no way for the uploader to be certain that's what they're doing.

Also, the "hash" probably needs to be something a bit more image-focused than, say, SHA256. Otherwise any trivial modification of the image would change the hash. So it's got to be something that survives scaling, cropping, resolution changes, watermarking, etc. Which means that if the exact algorithm leaks, people can reverse engineer it to figure out how to work around it. That's another reason they need to do the hashing on their end.

Re:Why not compute hash locally?

[mapkinase]

>If that is really the case, when why not compute the hash locally on the user's machine, and upload only the hash?

Think of the following things:

- Is the person who shared naked videos of themselves smart?

- Which of the two: privacy of the naked video or privacy of the hash will be guarded more by that person?

- What will happen with leaked hashes? Correct, it will be used as a database of unusable material which everybody willing to "revenge" as a test ground before using the material.

Things will just happen faster. There will be a competition to publicize material before facebook registers it.

Re:Why not compute hash locally?

[14erCleaner]

Because people would prank it, by uploading hashes of Donald Trump's official picture and similar stuff. They probably will have an asexual person (90-year-old nun or similar) who checks each incoming picture, to make sure it's really a nude.

Re: Why not compute hash locally?

[edtice1559]

Which is why you have to upload the images, I presume. If they see your account abusing this feature, they can easily purge their database. I'm sure somebody has a fabulous job monitoring this. I just with they had waited a few years until I needed a retirement gig.

Simpler solution

[religionofpeas]

If you don't want your nudes to end up on the internet, don't send them to other people.

Re:Simpler solution

[hesiod]

Oh. Another idiot. What about the ones others took, without you being aware

If someone else took the picture and the victim is unaware, the target probably doesn't have a copy to upload preemptively.

Re:Simpler solution

[RightwingNutjob]

Pick better friends and don't get shitfaced, blacked-out drunk and/or high when you go out. Don't expect other people to be sympathetic when your own poor choices come to bite you in that ass you felt the internet just had to see.

Re:Simpler solution

[religionofpeas]

What about the ones others took, without you being aware?

Oh. Another idiot. You don't have the hash of those.

Re:Simpler solution

[Oswald McWeany]

If you don't want your nudes to end up on the internet, don't send them to other people.

Better yet... don't take them in the first place.

Re:Simpler solution

[rogoshen1]

Or you know, infatuated with the idea of personal responsibility. I know I know, it's anathema to a well ordered, safe society... But people being held accountable for their decisions (even if it's negligence on their part, or results in being misled) is still alive and well in this country.

Maybe in another 20 years we'll finally solve this age old problem.

Re:Simpler solution

[Oswald McWeany]

Pick better friends and don't get shitfaced, blacked-out drunk and/or high when you go out. Don't expect other people to be sympathetic when your own poor choices come to bite you in that ass you felt the internet just had to see.

Meh... Facebook can probably generate a fairly accurate nude photo of anyone based upon their skin tone, and various clothed body photos already taken. If they have enough body shots they can probably have an algorithm generate your body shape under those clothes. They can guess at the colour of your nipples and genitalia by looking at the pigmentation of your lips. (nipple colour supposedly similar to lip colour). Pubic hair colour can be guessed at by hair colour- they can't tell if you shave or not, but probably can accurate guess by demographic. Under 35 you're probably shorn... 35 - 45 you're probably trimmed- over 45 you're probably full bush.

Re:Simpler solution

[thegarbz]

Implying that the type of people who consider using revenge porn are the kind of considerate and level headed thinkers that wouldn't ever take photos without soemones permission in the first place.

Re:Simpler solution

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't want your nudes to end up on the internet, don't send them to other people.

Sure, and if you don't want to be injured in a car accident, never get in a car. :)

Life is hard. Some of it is extremely unpleasant. Much of it is a long boring grind. But occasionally there are some good fun bits that balance out all the rest. Love in a variety of different forms can be everything from good fun to nourishing for the soul. For many of us, love is one of the main things that makes life worth living.

Ideally, whenever we wanted or needed love, our partner would be right there to have fun with. But sometimes life requires us to be apart. Maybe our partner has a job that requires extensive travel - perhaps even a deployment in the military. Or maybe our partner needs to care for an aging parent.

Sending and receiving sexual content across the internet can be a lot of fun. And it can also be good for relationships when people are required by circumstances beyond their control to be apart. So "just don't do it" isn't really an ideal solution.

Re:Simpler solution

[NikeHerc]

(nipple colour supposedly similar to lip colour)

That assertion makes me think I've seen a lot more nipples than you have...

Re:Simpler solution

[bobbied]

Which is when I'd advise you call law enforcement. There is no shame in this scenario for the victim who didn't have anything to do with taking or sending the picture. Call the police.

I'd call them if it happened to me, but For your protection, not mine.

Re:Simpler solution

[Holi]

Don't breakup with your abusive boyfriend?

Re:Simpler solution

[Holi]

I wish I had mod points

Re:Simpler solution

[RightwingNutjob]

How about: don't let him take naked pictures. Or better yet: don't get an abusive boyfriend in the first place.

Re:Simpler solution

[Oswald McWeany]

(nipple colour supposedly similar to lip colour)
  That assertion makes me think I've seen a lot more nipples than you have...

No, you were looking at people wearing lipstick.

Reprehensible

[mysidia]

Forcing users to upload highly-sensitive pics to make sure others' won't post them.
There HAS to be a better way.... like: how about analyzing an image and computing the hash on a client device and uploading just the hash + analysis data? Or at the very least.... mask any public individual identifying info inside the image before uploading.

Re:Reprehensible

[datavirtue]

....and how do you test that the feature actually works?

Re:Reprehensible

[rogoshen1]

i *STILL* wouldn't trust facebook with that. they might say they're doing a local hash, but whoops, we sent the entire image. (Or they say: "We uploaded the image to verify the hashing algo on the client -- we immediately delete it. Honest!"

It's pretty fucking simple. A company with the singular purpose of hoovering personal information about you (a company so invasive, so creepy; that in absence of direct data from you, will INFER information about you and yours), and then sell that information to advertisers -- is by definition a deceitful, cancerous entity who you have to be mentally god damn defective to trust.

Re:Reprehensible

[Anonymous Coward]

The better way is to realize that everybody has roughly the same parts and that pictures of said parts shouldn't be considered highly-sensitive things. We need more adults in the world and less babies pretending to be adults. Or rather, we need far more babies in the world since they don't consider seeing skin to be life traumatizing events.

You can't have the clients generating the hashes because then Facebook can't as easily verify the images were of nudes. Without verification (people paid a penny per picture to check), you'll have people uploading hashes of random things and completely screwing up IM based file sharing. You can be sure Facebook will be data mining the pictures. Enjoy your new enlargement ads specifically saying your actual size is too small even though it's above average. Targeted ads for hair removal, tanning lotions, etc... Don't forget programmers need to see these images to create such features.

Re:Reprehensible

[magarity]

....and how do you test that the feature actually works?

I hope their QA team doesn't look like the one where I work.

Re:Reprehensible

[apoc.famine]

Step 1: Take a photo. Of anything.

Step 2: Hash it.

Step 3: Report the hash.

Step 4: Try to upload the photo.

Step 5: Realize you just asked a really dumb question.

Step 6: Depart the internet in shame.

Re:Reprehensible

[NikeHerc]

Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor

That signature may be the funniest thing I've ever read on /.!

I'm assuming, of course, that Distiraptor is a vector and Timeraptor is a scalar.

Re:Reprehensible

[kenh]

There HAS to be a better way....

Sure there is, take pictures of your bedroom empty, then let Facebook detect the room, not the person in the room having sex...

Re:Reprehensible

[mysidia]

Sure there is, take pictures of your bedroom empty,

Adding a nude person to an empty room is definitely going to change the hash....

You know where this came from

[SuperKendall]

You can't tell me this idea did not come from a bunch of Facebook admins tired of the work it took to Google nudes.

"Let the nudes come to us!", they thought... and so it was.

Hash locally, why upload??

[Tinsoldier314]

Theoretically you could hash files using FileAPI in modern browsers. Alternatively, an offline tool could be used to index your photos on your computer. Both of those scenarios would likely not be accessible via mobile devices although there's nothing preventing the development of a dedicated mobile app that does all of this locally on the device. Open source it so it can audited.

I'm not certain what the exposure is with this approach, in theory someone could abuse the process to claim hashes for other peoples images but I don't think there's any more risk of that with a local process than an online process. Regardless, the idea that you would upload nude images to a third party service like this seems ridiculous. Also, one seventeen year old does it and suddenly the service is in possession of child porn, it's nuts.

And they fall for this?

[hired killer]

The idiocy of this is that if the revenge poster slightly alters the image (resize, re-compress, slight quality change, etc) it changes the hashing.

"All your nub are belong to us"

Re:And they fall for this?

[im_thatoneguy]

Like audio fingerprinting this isn't a cryptographically accurate hash but more like a song fingerprint in that it only takes a small segment of the image for recognition.

Of course the real abuse would be to take a picture of the Eiffel tower and watch everyone's uploads fail for a few hours.

Zuck can't find his own porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I thought I was lazy.

The proper way to do this

[slashmydots]

So the proper way to do this is a one way transfer between servers and then disconnect each server from the internet when it's full. Then send requests over a highly restricted local network for comparisons. How they'll actually probably do this is on live, public-facing servers and just try to permissions-protect them or something stupid like that.

hashing should be client side only

[z3alot]

If facebook only needs a hash of the image, it should allow users to upload only the hash by providing the hashing function. Or are we talking about something super proprietary here?

This is getting crazy

[whyyisthissohard]

Or, maybe, instead of blaming the person who obtained the image fairly for whatever use pleases them, the "victims" should assume the blame themselves and correct their own behavior.

Does no one see the potential pitfalls of training certain 'protected classes' to believe that they have no personal responsibility for their actions?

Re:This is getting crazy

[david_thornley]

In other words, nobody should ever do anything that might come back to bite them sometime, no matter how unlikely it appears. And if somebody does, it's their fault. Also, nobody should be shielded from the full potential consequences of their actions. We need to ban insurance companies, to start with.

If you send a nudie to someone and then realize it's a really bad idea, correcting your own behavior isn't going to do a bit of good.

Re:This is getting crazy

[whyyisthissohard]

Yes it will. It will mitigate your chances of sending one to an untrustworthy person and mitigate your chances of humiliation. Really not very complicated.

Re:This is getting crazy

[david_thornley]

Yeah, and I can list a whole host of rules which will prevent this and that. You know what happens when there's a long unwritten list of such rules? People don't obey all of them all the time. It's part of human nature. The purpose they do serve is that the smug get to say "I told you so" later on.

By your reasoning, someone who leaves their keys in the car and has is stolen is soley to blame, not the person who steals the car.

You also have completely failed to explain what "correcting their own behavior" means, given an irrevocable mistake.

Pills?

[Jfetjunky]

Imagine the enlargement pill ads when they start figuring out who would actually benefit!

I'm terrible, I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself, the article made it too easy.

Is Mark Zuckerberg your friend?

[lbmouse]

He wants to see you neked.

Blocking uploads

[taustin]

" . . . its system will block the upload process."

Given that revenge porn is a crime in an increasing number of places, shouldn't be include "and notify the police of the attempt"? Does it even notify the user of the attempt?

What are the terms of service on these uploads? Do they include the clause that says "and we can change these TOS any time we want, to anything we want, and there's nothing you can do about it"?

Why do you need to send the image?

[scubamage]

Simply create a utility that lets a user open an image, calculate the hash, and send to facebook. They have enough machine learning ability to look and tell if something is a hot dog or not a hot dog. Or are they going to rely on human beings to review every photo and validate that it isn't, say, a cat photo?

Re:Why do you need to send the image?

[scubamage]

This is actually a very good approach.

Cute

[Oswald McWeany]

Cute... Facebook pretending they don't have nude photos or a naked composite of everyone already.

Re:Cute

[bobbied]

What? Is Siri who's sorting my pictures, sending them to Facebook too?

Re:Trivially defeated

[happyhungarian]

Wouldn't this be trivially defeated by running the pic through some sort of very minimal filter and then uploading the "new" pic?

Or even just re-saving it as jpeg with the compression cranked up a few percent?

I presumed they would employ an "image hashing" algorithm of sorts, you know like audio fingerprinting. Then again, with how poorly thought out their solution is, I wouldn't expect them to have considered this. Having said that, even the simple hash blocking would prevent many non-savvy users from uploading. A better solution would be to let the uploader think it went through, but keep the post only visible to him so that he/she wouldn't keep trying defeat the filter.

Facebook = idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

make a tool that computes the hash locally that you then upload, FFS.

Re:Facebook = idiots

[NoZart]

but hashes are harder to data mine on, dummy.

Re:Best idea ever

[phayes]

The prudishness endemic in American society is not universal. Thankfully, I live in a society that does not tie itself in hypocritical knots because a nipple was shown on TV.

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Requires Manual Review of Images

[The MAZZTer]

This won't work because someone from Facebook would need to look at the images to determine if a request is legit, which, as the article says, is EXACTLY the thing the victim wants to avoid.

If nobody looks at the image, or, as some have suggested, the hash is computed client side (so nobody would be able to look at the image) it would be ripe for abuse. I could easily file takedowns for any pictures I want.

As a side note, someone also mentioned hashes won't work since they can be foiled by simple image manipulations. Doubtless this will be true in some cases, but it is certainly possible to make an image comparison that can take some of these things into account. Plus, the goal is likely to get the easy image postings automatically, while the remainder will be much smaller in number and easier for Facebook support staff to deal with manually as requested.

Re:Requires Manual Review of Images

[pz]

If nobody looks at the image, or, as some have suggested, the hash is computed client side (so nobody would be able to look at the image) it would be ripe for abuse. I could easily file takedowns for any pictures I want.

Back when the Internet was young, there was a brief period where pornographic images were illegal in the US. There was substantial effort put into automatic detection of the nude human form that was reasonably successful. Shouldn't be that hard to put a first-level filter on submissions, again client-side.

So who's idea was this, exactly?

[zarmanto]

I'm personally suspicious of anyone who asks me for my private data -- all the more-so, when the first thing out of their mouth is that they only need it to protect me. And the thought that promptly entered my mind upon reading this particular blurb, is that perhaps somebody deep within the confines of Facebook HQ is positively drooling at the prospect of all those uploaded nudes that will soon be coming his way...

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[account_deleted]

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SubjectIsSubject

[p0p0]

Awesome, because the day that leaks will be the beginning of the end for Facebook. They say they won't save them, but I don't trust them, not even a little, to keep their word.

Re:Yeah, about that

[Dwedit]

There are much better methods of hashing images than stupidly taking a file checksum, such as this one here:
https://pippy360.github.io/tra...

This algorithm here does not care about affine transformations applied to the image, so it can be scaled, rotated, skewed, and still be a match.

Interesting implications

[TimothyHollins]

Well this is interesting.

You have to send the image to FB. That prevents abuse of the system, since you won't be able to get a hash of the Mona Lisa or some stock photo up there. What it also implies is that the image is verified before the hash is computed. That means that some dude will be looking at your nudes before deciding if it's a real or fake one.

But, why aren't they using an algorithm for this? Well, current models (IsItPorn) aren't remotely there yet. A lot of weird stuff will get hashed and submitted. Second, an algorithm will not have the talent to identify fake stuff or funny stuff. And third, what do you think happens if FB gets it wrong? If they are actively participating in the revenge porn activity they will in fact be liable for any mistake (and the person in question is unlikely to be amicable at the time). So they will absolutely have an employee go through the details to avoid mishaps.

I really hope I can sign up for that job.

Re:Yeah, about that

[Dwedit]

There are image similarity algorithms out there that do not care about the absolute hash of the file, and can detect the same image cropped, scaled, or rotated just fine.
Here is one such algorithm:
https://pippy360.github.io/tra...

lmao

[ArylAkamov]

Assuming this is all automated, I can just upload any picture I don't want anyone else to upload?
If it is not automted/if it is verified by a human, I live it 6 monthes before the leaks start.

Keeping only a hash would be useless

[FrankOVD]

You'd only have to tweak one pixel, just a little bit, and the hash would be completely different. I don't believe that "hash" thing. They act like this is gonna be unhackable but it won't be. It's just a very very bad idea unless there is some clever and perfect way to prevent tempering the the picture to change the hash, which would surprise me.

Time to make my fake app!

[wardrich86]

Facebook NudeProtect by Facebook Inc. [invisible unicode here]. Just a simple interface where users can upload their nudes to have them scanned by FB... could even include some fake Hollywood-looking scans and jargon, followed by a "destroying image" blurb. Nothing bad will come of this idea FB has.

Isn't this how the US copyright office handles it?

[grilled-cheese]

As dumb as it sounds, this is how the copyright office handles it already. http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/2...

Hashes?

[poached]

I haven't read the article, but I assume a file hash won't prevent the abuser from resizing the picture, changing a pixel on the image which will change the hash completely. Unless of course Facebook does something like scale and rotation invariant pattern detection and hashes off of those.

Way ahead of you!

[GameboyRMH]

I've made it impossible to take pictures of my junk in the first place, by way of a thick and luxuriant man-bush which tastefully covers all. And the ladies laughed at it! WELL WHO'S LAUGHING NOW!?

This doesn't make sense.

[Wycliffe]

First off, is there really a problem with revenge porn on facebook and if there is, it would seem that the easiest solution for
facebook is to block all porn. I've never seen nudes on facebook. I always assumed that it would be against facebook policy
as facebook is mostly a PG-13 kindof place.

Second, I would think that facial recognition would be the correct solution. Let someone upload a picture of their face and
facebook can make sure that that particular face doesn't appear in nudes. An unidentified nude without a face even if someone
says "this is so-in-so" is pretty harmless as if you can't see the face you could pretty much say it is anyone.

Lastly, google just came out with facial recognition for dogs so presumably you could also use that same technology for
tattoos, or specific body parts too.

But again, I would think revenge porn would be primarily a problem on other services not facebook.

Re:This doesn't make sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

>google just came out with facial recognition for dogs so presumably you could also use that same technology for...

Oh, he's talking about pets! Never mind.

Re:This doesn't make sense.

[turp182]

There's quite a bit of porn on Facebook. Women encounter the brunt of it, from guys.

Some "women" (assuming not actually people, but the photos are obviously real from somewhere) use nudes to try and get "friends", I'm not sure of the nature of these but I figure it's scamming.

Some people also send friend requests of other people just to have them see something horrifying.

I Facebook about twice a year, it's others in the family that do it more and I really wish they didn't (photos/tags of my kids and me/wife). I use Facebook for the birthday reminders which come via email.

Oh, and the facial recognition they have is frightening. It's accurate. There was another post just today here about this, worth a read.

Re:This doesn't make sense.

[kenh]

Second, I would think that facial recognition would be the correct solution. Let someone upload a picture of their face and
facebook can make sure that that particular face doesn't appear in nudes.

Or, just upload a bunch of pictures of your bedroom, living room, kitchen, garage, backyard, etc. - anywhere you might be photographed having sex - then Facebook will identify the background and block the photo.

Re:This doesn't make sense.

[Wycliffe]

Or, just upload a bunch of pictures of your bedroom, living room, kitchen, garage, backyard, etc. - anywhere you might be photographed having sex - then Facebook will identify the background and block the photo.

I like this idea. The only problem with it is that it could be used as a DoS attack. For instance you could upload a picture with the Statue of Liberty or Niagara Falls in the background and kick off everyone's vacation photos. There might be ways to mitigate this for backgrounds but this type of DoS attack would not work at all for face shots and if it did start becoming a problem (for instance trying to block all pictures of Trump), you could require an upload of a government picture ID. Facial recognition wouldn't have to be perfect for every angle either. It would only have to get a single positive match for the entire length of the video.

Re:This doesn't make sense.

[Wycliffe]

There's quite a bit of porn on Facebook. Women encounter the brunt of it, from guys.

Some "women" (assuming not actually people, but the photos are obviously real from somewhere) use nudes to try and get "friends", I'm not sure of the nature of these but I figure it's scamming.

Some people also send friend requests of other people just to have them see something horrifying.

But that was kindof my point. All the examples you mention are either spam or harassment. It would seem like the easiest thing for facebook to do would to just block all nude photos and videos from its site. I know it already does some of this because there have already been cases of overcensorship of breastfeeding moms, etc... It would seem like the easiest thing would be to have a whitelist instead of a blacklist.

Facebook: Innovating Beyond Apple

[forkfail]

Silly iPhone with their limited facial recognition. Facebook will soon offer you the confidence of the far more secure full-body recognition experience.

Re:Facebook: Innovating Beyond Apple

[Stephen Battleware]

Funny, but poignant.

In other news...

[DontBeAMoran]

Facebook announces new partnership with YouPorn and RedTube.

Easy fix

[Roger W Moore]

If nobody looks at the image, or, as some have suggested, the hash is computed client side (so nobody would be able to look at the image) it would be ripe for abuse.

There is a very easy fix for this - the first time the hash matches the takedown requires human approval. This way someone only looks at the image if the image is already uploaded for people to look at and you can't abuse the system by filing takedowns for random pictures. This would even reduce Facebook's work because instead of checking every upload they only have to check ones which match.

Two thoughts

[quantaman]

1) Are we sure it isn't April 1st? I've heard of companies doing dumb things but I can't imagine how this anyone thought this was a good idea, are we sure the whole article isn't some kind of prank?

2) IF they were going to try this simple facial recognition should be enough.

Re:Works 100%

[hackwrench]

Yes, but that's not how relationships work. People want to do things that don't work 100% because for that moment they want that person to have access to such things. Then the relationship sours and things that were wanted become unwanted.

jesus christ!

[NTesla]

If South Park is not making an episode out of this, they dropped the ball[s]!
Seriously, photoshop your own face onto your favorite porn star and send it to Facebook... then wait and see what happens. (if it surfaces anywhere, sue Facebook!)
 

Advanced Stupidity Test

[Cajun Hell]

Stupidity Tests are awesome and I'm glad that the suits haven't taken over Facebook and forced them to lose their sense of humor. I like how Facebook gets to take things to the next level (they already have a population of volunteers who are pre-selected as being ok with Facebook in general). Let's see how many fall for it. 2018 needs good news stories too.

I think this is one of the very best prank ideas, ever. And would Google have thought of something so invasive? Would Microsoft have thought of something so dark? Would Apple have thought of something so limited and constraining? Would Amazon have thought of something this obviously-hair-brained? Facebook wins this round, period, beating everyone else at their own game.

Exactly, just let hashes be uploaded

[Fallen Kell]

Seriously, just let the hashes be uploaded in the first place and not the photo. If the tool really is just using hashes, there is no need to send the photo. The only thing that the photo could be used for is for all the other data mining that you have already agreed to, such as advertising uses...

Then of course, there is the insider threat that someone with the keys to the kingdom will have one heck of an amatuer collection on their hands....

uh, wait. you are giving FB a database of nudes?

[swschrad]

we already know that FB is the king of metadata porn, and you want to volunteer genuine porn?

is there an antidote for the Stupid Virus, which seems to be spreading exponentially?

Re:Great idea!

[bobbied]

For who?

Facebook? Not a thing, only a new profit center...

For the poor unfortunate unwashed masses who are uploading embarrassing pictures for free? The cat's already out of the bag so what are they going to lose now?

Hey, idiots, here's a thought.... How about not taking such pictures in the first place? That way there is no risk of "exposure" no matter what happens.

An app would be better

[Whooty McWhooface]

FB could release an app (maybe more geared for a desktop) to generate the hash on THEIR OWN FREEKIN' PC. Then the hash itself is added to the database.

Sure, the admins at FB won't be able to do....umm, Quality Control?....on the image, but more people would use it if they knew no one else would see it.

But, what if they don't have the image (i.e. the guy took it on his cell and never sent it to her, etc.) This still would not help. Maybe some type of facial recognition tech, but more like Ms. Ballbreaker on Porky's where they would recognize it/them anywhere in a lineup? Boobie-metrics?

Re:Kardashian/Jenner & Trump

[bobbied]

I'm starting to like this idea...

Won't slightly editing the image change the hash?

[cyn1c77]

Seriously, Facebook just wants more data to blackmail you with.

Either be OK with pictures of you naked not being private or don't take them at all.

Re:Works 100%

[cayenne8]

Yes, but that's not how relationships work. People want to do things that don't work 100% because for that moment they want that person to have access to such things.

Well, anyone going into a relationship, assuming that it will last forever is an idiot.

We're all human, we all fuck up and most of the time, we split, and not all the time amicably.

So, if you keep that in mind...you'll know it isn't a good idea to let yourself be photographed in nude or sexual situations.

This is not the world ..

[Stephen Battleware]

.. I was born into. Times really have changed. Funnily enough for by now, I would have ventured personal space travel and flying cars, the preemption of revenge porn never crossed my mind.

Re:This is not the world ..

[Stephen Battleware]

Sad, really.

Re:Works 100%

[hackwrench]

But it is a good idea... at the time. It's only after the relationship sours that it becomes a bad idea. People are state machines and every moment is a forever, so it does last forever, just not for all eternity.

Re:Why? Have the not heard of SHA256?

[Stephen Battleware]

"Unless Zuckerberg wants to browse the actual photos." He probably already does.

Re:Works 100%

[butchersong]

If I take that view though I'll never get married because by extension, I'd be an idiot to not assume financial ruin.

Re:We're living is a post-parody world.

[Stephen Battleware]

While this is over the top and probably would have done it, my 'truth is stranger than fiction' moment was when I found out all that stuff on the Internet about the banksters really was true.e.g. almost all the money is really just evidence of interest bearing debt i.e. there is no money, just debt.

Re:Works 100%

[Stephen Battleware]

"I'd be an idiot to not assume financial ruin."

Yes, you would be. A pre-nup is nearly a must in this day and age.

Why can't you just upload the hash?

[istartedi]

I don't get this. Why can't you just upload the hash? There are some really fantastic algorithms that are virtually impossible to falsely collide. Then if your former SO uploads something that collides, a real human can still make the final call. A smart algorithm could also "fuzz" the pictures so that if your ex tries to sprinkle pixels, resize, crop, etc., the "fuzzed" shot still has the same hash as the clean shot. All of that could be done client side. FB has no need for the data... but when did that ever stop them?

Re:Why can't you just upload the hash?

[NoZart]

but FB isn't interested in the hashes. They are interested in getting the picture, generating lots of tags for advertisers, then generate the hash, then delete it (maybe). Just uploading hashes from the client would exclude FB from the part of the process they are interested in.

Re:Why can't you just upload the hash?

[david_thornley]

In that case I unleash my fiendish plan by uploading hash after hash of cute cat pictures, preventing them from being on Facebook, and the world lies prostrate at my feet! Mwahahahaha!

And somewhere...

[roc97007]

....at the Facebook offices is a certain file server "for internal use only"...

Best way to prevent revenge pr0n

[Trax3001BBS]

This has been addressed before, as anything that pops up anymore - The accepted approach is if you do have your pix taken, wear a mask. It's that simple. It can be as unobtrusive as the ones Google shows if you search for: nude pictures with mask and view images.

Re:Yeah, about that

[tepples]

The first step of hashing, per the linked article, involves finding keypoints in the image that are still detected as keypoints even in an affine transformed copy of an image. How is this done? Does it involve scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) or some other feature detection means subject to a United States patent?

Re:Works 100%

[YukariHirai]

As you say, humans fuck up. An amazingly common form of fuckup is making the assumption that the person you're dating/fucking is completely trustworthy. When people are in love (or just really, really horny, as the case may be), they're just not prepared to think that this person would betray them.

Change the hash?

[hduff]

Can't you do stuff to the photo to change the hash? I mean, it can't be that simple, no?

Cue FB Data Breach in 3 ... 2 ...

[hduff]

You know it will happen. Especially for nudes.

Trust

[Paradise Pete]

If Facebook is more trustworthy than your lovers then you've really made some poor choices in your life.

Back to basics?

[suss]

This is just back to basics for what facebook's original intention was; mark zuckerberg's personal snoop and fap source.

oooh boy...

[XSportSeeker]

Even though I understand the technical explanation behind this, Facebook is going to have a very very hard time suggesting such a thing

on your marks

[juenger1701]

Ladies and gentlemen i give you the next big hack target

This is purely optics...

[Timothy2.0]

Will FB be able to fix the obvious and simple dodge: minor changes to the file completely change the hash, making hash-matching filters almost meaningless.

Why naked? Won't bikini's be enough?

[bronney]

It doesn't have to be completely butt naked does it? Like seriously they need the hash of your dick to know it's you? Can't just use faces, arms and everything else but no?? They need you dick! ;)

Clearly a scam if you ask me.

Excellent

[Tighe_L]

I'm going to upload photos of things I'm sick of people posting on facebook. :-)

Re:Not Facebook

[Wycliffe]

The problem in fact is with the site AssFaceBook. Also RedFaceBook, PronFaceBook, and DoYouKissYourMotherWithThatFaceBook!

None of which to my knowledge facebook has any control over so they can have the best blocker in the world on facebook and it won't do any good.

Re:Works 100%

[CanadianMacFan]

Or at least make sure that everything on the wedding gift registry is in multiples of two so it's easier to sort things when you split up.