Facebook's New Captcha Test: 'Upload A Clear Photo of Your Face' (wired.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Facebook may soon ask you to "upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face," to prove you're not a bot. The company is using a new kind of captcha to verify whether a user is a real person. According to a screenshot of the identity test shared on Twitter on Tuesday and verified by Facebook, the prompt says: "Please upload a photo of yourself that clearly shows your face. We'll check it and then permanently delete it from our servers." The process is automated, including identifying suspicious activity and checking the photo. To determine if the account is authentic, Facebook looks at whether the photo is unique.

Comments

WHY?

[tripleevenfall]

Why do Facebook, Apple, and others thing public information (like what your face looks like) is more secure than a private key that exists only in your mind?

Re:WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they want to build a comprehensive and, more importantly, up to date image of what you look like for their facial recognition software.

I'm sure there's some guy out there who gets a massive boner when he thinks about with one hi-res crowd shot of people they can pull sophisticated buying demographics to sell to advertisers.

Re:WHY?

[cmaurand]

Worse, you can beat the face recognition with a photo, because face recognition does not work in 3 dimensions.

Re:WHY?

[religionofpeas]

And in this case, FB isn't interested in adding security to your account, they just want a new way to prove that it is a person behind the account instead of a robot. Nothing to do with security.

We're already at the point where a computer can generate unlimited artificial faces that are good enough to fool such a system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I guess it has nothing to do with security, but rather with building a database of people, or analyzing your facial features and linking them to your preferences.

Re:WHY?

[war4peace]

I suggest everyone to use the same image of Jesus, just for kicks.

Re: WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your biodata can't be changed.

Bullshit.

Injuries can severely alter one's face. Plastic surgery can, too. As can masks, makeup, and beards/moustaches.

It's not just about one's face, either. Circumcision changes the appearance of one's penis. Acid burns can remove or distort one's fingerprints. Radiation can even alter one's DNA.

Biodata can be changed.

Re: WHY?

[Narcocide]

He belongs to neither political party. He's a paid astro-turfer and his only goal is to hilariously cause the exact divisiveness he's pretending to rail against.

Re:WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also they want your location data from photo so they can match you to nearby people.

I wish there was an option to remove exif when uploading photos from album...

Re: WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't the right wing that came up with the LGBTQI2SGMARHN+ concept. They aren't the ones pushing 87 different genders. They aren't the ones spending decades in college obsessing over race, and gender, and sexual preference, and other ways to classify people. The right wing is far less divisive than the left wing.

Re:WHY?

[denis-The-menace]

utilities do exist. The real issue is that you should not have to strip out private info that you did not ask to insert into EVERY picture.

Re:WHY?

[davester666]

Nobody is claiming it is more secure. It is more convenient to use your fingerprint/face to unlock your phone, while being reasonably secure.

And this article seems to be just about facebook checking that a person is using the device, vs a bot, not that a specific person is using the device.

Re: WHY?

[jedidiah]

The DNA from my blood is different than the DNA in my saliva.

Re:WHY?

[BitterOak]

Why do Facebook, Apple, and others thing public information (like what your face looks like) is more secure than a private key that exists only in your mind?

They're not making any such claim. They're proposing using an image of your face as a captcha, not as a login credential.

Re:WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

There can be only one correct image of Jesus. (SFW, unless you work in a bowling alley)

Re:WHY?

[Bryansix]

Exactly. The only captcha that I remember on Facebook is when you are creating a new account or recovering your password.

Re: WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it's just the right wing constantly screaming about false flag operations, then getting caught staging them, whining about free speech while working hard to silence critics, posturing about family values while screwing their male prostitutes, railing against gays while ... oh, that one's already covered..., and on, and on, and on.

The people who are obsessing over gender and a thousand separate pronouns? They're actually on the fringes of the left, and the rest of the left are kinda embarrassed by them. The nut cases on the right? THEY ARE IN CHARGE OF THE FREAKING COUNTRY.

Re:WHY?

[arth1]

I suggest everyone to use the same image of Jesus, just for kicks.

If Facebook were telling the truth, everyone (and all bots) could indeed use the same image, as long as nobody uploaded it anywhere where it could be scanned by Facebook. Because if they immediately delete the image as they claim, they won't know whether it has been used by others.
However, in reality...

Re:WHY?

[dgatwood]

Will this mean you'll have to supply a fresh photo every time you log in? Funny, replay attacks should now be awfully easy, even if they get a fresh picture every time. Pictures aren't hard to manipulate, after all.

I assume this is for people creating new accounts, i.e. not for authentication, but rather for drastically reducing the number of fake accounts that use the same two or three pictures of half-naked girls and send out friend requests to random people.

So now, the scammers will at least have to use bots to scour the web for pictures of people's faces before creating accounts....

Re:WHY?

[e_pluribus_funk]

>Because they want to build a comprehensive and, more importantly, up to date image of what you look like for their facial recognition software.

With "they" being US intelligence agencies.

Re: WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because lumping hundreds of millions of people under one label and then assigning specific traits to that group is a great idea, right? You dumb fucks on "either side" can't seem to understand basic goddamn fucking logic. All you dumb shits do is farm red herrings and manufacture straw men. Feminazis and religitards are both shitheads; you're just swimming in different flavored pools of mental feces while claiming your pool doesn't smell like rank sulfur-swirling ass gravy. The world would be a better place if all of you intellectually bankrupt ideologically blinded retards died in a very large yet very specific fire.

Fuck you, fuck them, fuck it all.

And just because Slashdot doesn't like it, I'm going to use the word nîggers. I loves my black people, but I hates my nìggas.

Re:WHY?

[torkus]

They will delete the image and keep a one-way hash of it.

They can then log those hashes and, if they see one repeat then they know something fishy is going on. The data level of the hashing determines if they reject after a single match or if they're looking for multiple matches before they consider it a duplicate login attempt.

It's actually a pretty inventive way to prevent bots if you have the data processing capability ... and FB/Google/Amazon types DO have it. If you add in some facial recognition you can even help ensure the person logging in belongs on the account (this is good and bad and likely would be optional if they had a brain).

With that said, fuck no I'm not helping their other AI algos they are likely planning to use this data for and an even bigger fuck no to giving them that level of invasive, pervasive view into my life. You aren't going to data mine the background for more reasons to sell targeted adds on my screen.

Re:WHY?

[TangoMargarine]

So you just apply a filter to the photo that adds a little random visual noise to the data, and everybody can still use the same photo.

Re:WHY?

[wyHunter]

Of course.

Re:WHY?

[sheramil]

I would suggest rotating it by 0.414 degrees each time, until the algorithm says "You appear to be upside down. Please try again."

Re:WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, it's not like I don't know how to remove fucking exif data from photo with 3rd party application. I want this functionality to be integrated in mobile OS app permissions logic.

Re:WHY?

[markdavis]

>"Because they want to build a comprehensive and, more importantly, up to date image of what you look like for their facial recognition software."

+1

This has NOTHING to do with security and EVERYTHING to do with gathering yet more information about their users. Hopefully people will take a clue and revolt against such crap.

Re: WHY?

[AvitarX]

They don't, well Facebook doesn't.

They think it'll be harder for a bot to scrape photos and make fake profiles if they run the profile pic against their database of profile pics.

Re:WHY?

[infolation]

A dusting of andom noise does not fool facial recognition. Features extraction for hashing uses wavelet image processing (among other processes). Splitting the data into different frequency ranges allows the algorithm to isolate the frequency components (introduced by factors like expression or illumination) into sub-bands. Wavelet-based methods strip out these variables and focus on the sub-bands that contain the most relevant information.

Re:WHY?

[TangoMargarine]

It does if it's hashing the binary photo data, which is what GP was talking about. For that matter, cropping the photo would do it.

The facial recognition is just to recognize whether it *is* a face, not match it against others it's seen. If by "hashes" they literally meant a hash like MD5 or SHA-1.

Re:WHY?

[TangoMargarine]

Blarg, replied before really reading the whole post. Disregard :P

I mean, you'd just need to work out which precise areas you had to munge. Make the eyes a slightly different shade of blue or whatever. If the algorithm accepts a certain amount of fudge factor that's kind of stretching the definition of "hash."

Re:WHY?

[Paradise Pete]

Why do Facebook, Apple, and others thing public information (like what your face looks like) is more secure than a private key that exists only in your mind?

Why do you think that they think that?

Re:WHY?

[jrumney]

Think about what you are saying for a minute. Why would Facebook insist on a unique FACE every time you log into Facebook?

Re: WHY?

[haruchai]

"It wasn't the right wing that came up with the LGBTQI2SGMARHN+ concept......The right wing is far less divisive than the left wing"
It's more useful to classify them according to ancestry, skin color & apply the One Drop rule.
Hey fucknuts, while I find some of the gendering amusing, it does give those who feel out of place a way to be more comfortable in their own skin. How is that divisive?
If you want the world to be less divisive, then acting, eating & speaking Chinese would be the way to go.

Re: WHY?

[haruchai]

"Most of the right-wing hate is left-wingers hoaxing"
Is James Fields, the asshole who drove the car through the counter-protest crowd & murdered Heather Heyer,
left-wing?

Re: WHY?

[TheOuterLinux]

Because of "everyone is special and unique" bullshit TV pedaled onto children grew up and evolved to a logical fallacy unquestionably bought by highly payed, moronic, business majored CEOs because of technical terms such as "DNA" and "phenotype." These guys don't exactly have to take many science classes in college if you catch my drift. So, an entire generation took that psychology with them into maturity and now, but not quite so literally, many think that because your DNA is different than mine, our smart phones can see those differences in our "We of the world, handholding, blah blah blah," faces. Large corporations make their money on the subconscious allusions of these type of idiots everyday. And where money fails, there's always some powerful, political, fear-mongering, asshole saying we need biometrics to prevent crime.

Re: WHY?

[Known Nutter]

highly payed, moronic, business majored CEOs...

I always love it when someone goes on a rant about how stupid and moronic some group is, but fails to use a simple English verb correctly. I usually stop reading such rants when I spot it.

"Paid" is a financial or transactional term, while "payed" is a nautical term (e.g.; "the rope was fully payed out").

The More You Know! :)

Re:WHY?

[gumbi west]

Thinking while on slashdot has gone from optional to rare.

Re:WHY?

[Maxo-Texas]

Unless you are logging in thru a VPN, they already know where you are.

I have an anonymous account with 1 interest I follow. No pictures. No other personal data.

I've had several friends recommended to me (a fairly high percentage of the random recommendations too- like 20%) as possible friends.

Re:WHY?

[thereitis]

Yep, I did the same. It's clear as day what their game is and I'm not playing.

Re:WHY?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Sure, the US intelligence services really give a shit about you compared to advertisers who want to bleed you dry.

Besides, the US government already knows what you look like from photo IDs. (gathered from whichever government issues yours.) And they're straight on ideal for biometric identification

Re: WHY?

[e_pluribus_funk]

You should probably look up the definition of "most" vs the definition of "all".

Re: WHY?

[haruchai]

You should probably look up the definition of "most" vs the definition of "all".

Is he or is he not a true example of rightwing hate? Simple question.

Re: WHY?

[e_pluribus_funk]

>Is he or is he not a true example of rightwing hate? Simple question. Probably. But the point stands most of the "examples" of right wing hate have been hoaxes perpetrated by the "victims".

Re: WHY?

[Cederic]

From https://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca...

The stand-alone Windows executable does not require Perl.

Sounds to me like the Windows version is superior.

Re: WHY?

[Cederic]

Hmm, lots of fun to be had.

I found Saints Row III to be one of the best ones. It let me create an avatar that looked like a young slim chinese woman with sharp cheekbones and a goatee.

She was disturbingly attractive.

Re:WHY?

[Cederic]

That's a terribly inelegant and lazy way of doing it. I use this approach too :)

Re: WHY?

[haruchai]

"But the point stands most of the "examples" of right wing hate have been hoaxes perpetrated by the "victims"

I have yet to see much in the way of proof. However that laudable purveyor of truth who calls himself James O'Keefe is up to his old tricks

"Right-Wing Group Caught Red-Handed Trying to Feed Washington Post a Fake Roy Moore Story"
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

Re: WHY?

[e_pluribus_funk]

>I have yet to see much in the way of proof.

Selection bias is alive and well. Google "left wing racism hoaxes" and start reading.

Re:WHY?

[RockDoctor]

Why do Facebook expect that I'd have a photo of myself on the device that I'm using at this particular moment? I think it's three or four devices since I had a Facebook application installed on a device that had a camera in it. And as for when I last had a photo taken of myself ... Years ago?

Re: WHY?

[haruchai]

>
Selection bias is alive and well.

Of that I have little doubt. If you spent as much time reading up on the fakes, hoaxes & underhanded assholery at all levels from the right wing, as you spend posting on Slashdot, you'd have little time for much else. I wasted 5 years on Sodahead - nuff said.

Re: WHY?

[haruchai]

Also I hope that the leftist astroturfers are as well-funded as the rightwingnutjob shit-disturbers.
George Soros can't be expected to pay for everything.

"Conservative Megadonor Robert Mercer Funded Project Veritas"
Project Veritas has come under intense scrutiny this week after one of its operatives, pretending to have been victimized by Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, tried to dupe the Washington Post. The scheme was uncovered by the Post on Monday. On Wednesday, BuzzFeed News published the names of two dozen donors to Project Veritas. A spokesperson for the organization responded that inquiries about donors were causing a spike in donations.

James O’Keefe, the organization's founder, came to national prominence for videos he made of employees of ACORN, a liberal organizing group, purportedly discussing illegal activities. He was later sued over the videos and paid out a six-figure settlement

Re: WHY?

[e_pluribus_funk]

>Also I hope that the leftist astroturfers are as well-funded as the rightwingnutjob shit-disturbers.

The left is much better funded than the right in this regard.

This is just David Brock's empire alone: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DO...

Additionally, many of the "mainstream" media sources are really just DNC operatives. The news media is a turnstyle for Democratic campaign operatives.

Re: WHY?

[david_thornley]

And you'll get a biased sample, because racism hoaxes don't have to be political in nature. What you'll get is articles about real or alleged racism hoaxes that somebody wants to label "left wing" for a variety of possible reasons.

Moreover, the number found tells us nothing without anything to compare it to. Actual acts of racism are probably far greater in number than the hoaxes, but it suits certain people's political agenda to publicize the hoaxes and disregard actual racism.

Re: WHY?

[haruchai]

Fox News, even with Ailes gone, is still just a propaganda & apologist arm of the GOP.

And there's no shortage of rightwing media. Conservative talk radio is an empire unto itself and there must be close to TWENTY high status former elected officials that have their own regular radio programs.
The Koch brothers are ridiculously wealthy and were budgeting close to $900 million dollars in the last election and have been very active politically for decades.
It's rumored they may spend $400 million in next year's mid-terms.
Sheldon Adelson spent over $90 million trying to support Romney in 2012 and donated $25 million to Trump's SuperPAC.
When he bought the Las Vegas Review & started throwing his weight around and squelching stories he didn't like - some were about him - many of the top staff quit.

Re: WHY?

[e_pluribus_funk]

>Fox News, even with Ailes gone, is still just a propaganda & apologist arm of the GOP.

So tell me what you think about CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News, NPR, NBC News, VICE News, WaPo, the NYT, etc?

>And there's no shortage of rightwing media. Conservative talk radio is an empire unto itself and there must be close to TWENTY high status former elected officials that have their own regular radio programs.

That's funny...and a bit hypocritical. Let's look at just a few of the politically connected left in the media:

(CNN) Chris Cuomo...brother to Andrew Cuomo (current left-wing governor of New York)
(ABC News) George Stephanopolous...former Clinton cabinet member
(CNN) Ben Rhodes ...former National Security Advisor to Obama
(ABC News) Ian Cameron - wife of Susan Rice of the "unmasking" fame in the Obama administration
(MSNBC) Chris Matthews - former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter and Chief of Staff for Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill
(CNN) Donna Brazil - Chair of the Democratic National Committee
(NPR WH correpondant) Ari Shapiro - married to Michael Gottlieb, a lawyer for the Obama legal team
(WaPo) Shailagh Murrah - communications director for Joe Biden as VP
(WSJ) Neil King - married to Shailagh Murrah
(NBC Today Show) Savannah Guthrie - co-host, married to Michael Feldman - chief of staff for Al Gore
(ABC/Univision) Matthew Jaffe - married to Katie Hogan, Obama's former deputy press secretary

Literally, the tip of the iceberg. There's a reason why a lot of the news headlines about Republicans read like they were written by the DNC and pushed out by all of the media outlets by friendly reporters - because they probably were - like White House correspondant Glenn Thrush's coordination with Podesta on a Hillary piece.

>The Koch brothers are ridiculously wealthy and were budgeting close to $900 million dollars in the last election and have been very active politically for decades.
>It's rumored they may spend $400 million in next year's mid-terms.
>Sheldon Adelson spent over $90 million trying to support Romney in 2012 and donated $25 million to Trump's SuperPAC.

It's chicken feed compared to what Soros is spending and just donated: http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/1.... And Soros is hardly the only left-wing billionaire. There is also Pierre Omidyar and Tom Steyer, not to mention the Ford Foundation which has been underwriting radical left-wing causes for the last 40 years or so with it's $11 billion endowment.

Re: WHY?

[haruchai]

The various media outlets you listed aren't uniform in their point of view or strategy.
And more than a few stations & print media have contrarians who have a fair bit of clout.
Regrettably I don't have a handy list like the one you've been keeping but the rightwing are not slouches when it comes to flapping their gums & peddling influence.

"It's chicken feed compared to what Soros is spending and just donated: http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/1... [cnn.com]. And Soros is hardly the only left-wing billionaire. There is also Pierre Omidyar and Tom Steyer, not to mention the Ford Foundation which has been underwriting radical left-wing causes for the last 40 years or so with it's $11 billion endowment"

It's quite clear what the Kochs, Adelson, Trump,etc get from the rightwing agenda - it all works at helping them keep their money and pass along more of it to their heirs. How many billion$ will repeal the Estate Tax save the top 1%?
But what do the leftist billionaries get for their money? How does tightening & enforcing financial regs help Soros?
How does paying MORE taxes help the Steyer et al?
Do they think that'll get their faces on Mount Rushmore? Or on the $50?

Re: WHY?

[e_pluribus_funk]

>But what do the leftist billionaries get for their money? How does tightening & enforcing financial regs help Soros?

They get power.

>How does paying MORE taxes help the Steyer et al?

Billionaires don't really pay taxes. Especially not inheritance taxes. The start foundations like George Soros (or Bill Gates) and donate the bulk of their fortunes to the foundation and then have their children sit on the foundation still controlling the funds.

Billionaires own the means of production, so even when taxes do hit them, they just pass the taxes on to consumers as part of the cost of doing business.

Re: WHY?

[haruchai]

"They get power"
I would think that a billionaire of any stripe already has plenty but I guess some are never satisfied.
Ok, evil leftist moneygrubbers are doing it for power.
And the right-thinking lovers of freedom....from legislation? No interest in power?

"The start foundations like George Soros (or Bill Gates) "
Any particular reason you named those two and not anyone else you may be more in tune with?

Not only no

[Zorro]

But Hell No!

Re:Not only no

[magarity]

Sorry, AC, Google Images has thousands of you.

Re:Not only no

[Narcocide]

The really fun part will be when people find out that it doesn't care whether the picture is of you or not. It will just accept the first one uploaded for you, and anyone too slow will be locked out of their own account by a picture of a parked car or some stock photography with a blur filter.

Re:Not only no

[Zaelath]

I can guarantee you they don't.

Yeah...

[WolfgangVL]

Yeah! It's nice to finally put a face to the name eh??

No thanks

[Arkham]

I get closer and closer to deleting Facebook permanently every day.

Re:No thanks

[Oswald McWeany]

I know a lot of people that have deleted their facebook account. A few go back after a short while, the rest say they're happier without it.

Re:No thanks

[religionofpeas]

I keep an empty facebook account, just in case I need to see someone else's facebook page.

Re:No thanks

[magarity]

What makes you think you really can?

Re:No thanks

[forkfail]

Thing is, though, Facebook is like Pepperidge Farm on steroids.

They remember. Even if you don't.

Re:No thanks

[DigiShaman]

Mine was deleted last month actually. https://www.facebook.com/help/...

Takes 14 days to fully commit, so long as you don't log in between that time. After that, if you attempt to log, it won't recognize your e-mail address anymore (not even for a password reset too). But, there is a link to recover the account - I don't dare touch that. That evil can stay asleep forever!

I'M LIBERATED! FUCK YOU ZUCK!

Re:No thanks

[jedidiah]

You can get banned by the Facebook censors over a mild disagreement on some non-controversial subject just because it contradicts whatever the Facebook group think is.

No need for trolling, flaming, insults, or anything remotely offensive.

The platform is ultimately self limiting.

Re:No thanks

[Rob Y.]

You must have an interesting idea of what constitutes "a mild disagreement on some non-controversial subject", given the amount of sheer vitriol I've seen in Facebook comments. Second only to those on Slashdot - except that Facebook commenters aren't as interested as Slashdotters in convincing people that they're smart while they insult them...

Re:No thanks

[Oligonicella]

because it contradicts whatever the Facebook group think is

You left off the important part.

Re:No thanks

[JohnFen]

Why haven't you already? I did it years ago and recommend it very highly.

Re:No thanks

[Rick Schumann]

Do it. I did, YEARS ago, and never looked back once. The tipping point for me was the day when I decided I wasn't comfortable with having posts of mine exist that were beyond a certain age, so I went through to delete them. The next day I went back and discovered they had all been un-deleted. So I tried again. The next day they were all back again. That's when it dawned on me what the true nature of Facebook was and that I did not like it one bit. So I deactivated the account. That was about 10 years ago I think. Regardless of what the trolls around here will inevitably say, Facebook doesn't know a damned thing about me -- because I never used my real name, am not using my real name here, and don't use my real name anywhere else, either, and I never let people take pictures of me for that matter. So do it. Get off Facebook and take your life back.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

do you actually believe that it was deleted? Its more likely that they move that information to a secondary database that isnt referenced by their forward database that the public version of facebook sees. After all they already have shadow profiles, what makes you think that they would just delete all of that succulent information on your self instead of transferring it to your shadow profile.

I bet if you used the same email address to sign up again that your entire friends list from the previous account would be in suggested friends.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Even feminists can't avoid the Facebook retard-o-matic banhammer for posting benign shit. Facebook pretty much fucks everyone for the most brain-dead reasons. It's not okay to express yourself on Fecesbook.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

"Empty"

That account has loads of metadata about you from all the other people you nkow, whether you know them or not. It has metadata from facebook cookies and trackers all over the web.

Facebook doesn't care about your data input, it cares about tracking you and setting that cookie to find out more about you than you even know.

You accepted this as part of their Terms of Service. Data brokers, right now, are trading information about who you are, and profiting off that. Even if you do nothing on the site, they likely know who you are through facial recognition.

Re:No thanks

[religionofpeas]

It has metadata from facebook cookies and trackers all over the web.

Just the same as for people who have never used facebook at all.

Re: No thanks

[religionofpeas]

Why would you ever want that? Virtual stalking?

Mostly for people who use facebook as their only way to announce stuff.

Re:No thanks

[markdavis]

>"I get closer and closer to deleting Facebook permanently every day."

I never even created one in the first place. I know, seems almost impossible, almost incredible. But it is true. I knew it would be like this, even when they first started Facebook. No Instagram, no Google+, no Twitter, no Myspace, etc. And when someone complains that I won't be able to keep in touch with them, I say "Sorry, it has nothing to do with you, I simply will not subject myself to what Facebook requires. Here is my home address, my home phone number, my work number, my cell number for texting, and a few Email addresses. Communicating with me is actually very fast and easy."

Re: No thanks

[Rick Schumann]

As always: I challenge ANYONE to show proof this is true, because I don't believe you.

Re:No thanks

[fafalone]

Since when does Facebook even allow deleting posts? Last time I tried it was either not there or so well hidden the only option appeared to be to just restrict visibility to 'only me'.
And you never let people take pictures of you? You sound like a fun guy. How long does that policy last before there's no one there to try?

Re: No thanks

[LucianIonita]

I get closer to infinity years old every day.

Re:No thanks

[andrewbaldwin]

Glad I'm not the only one.

I also have (lowers voice to stop you know who piping up....) facebook and several related sites set to 0.0.0.0 in my hosts file. Some sites may "break" or fail to load pictures but on the whole the bits of the internet I'm interested in work fine.

Re:No thanks

[Cederic]

I'd like to, but I'd be prosecuted under the Computer Misuse Act and it's unlikely I'd be able to track down and destroy all of their backups anyway.

Tempting, but I think to be certain you'd need nation level resources, insider assistance and some serious planning. Hmm. Anybody got Putin's number, I think I can talk him into it.

Re:No thanks

[Rick Schumann]

This was about ten years ago. I saw the handwriting on the wall and got out early.

Perhaps you just have shitty 'friends' who have no respect for your wishes and do as they please anyway? Regardless who the hell are you to judge me, someone you know nothing about? Bugger off.

Re:No thanks

[houghi]

I tried it and like an idiot I started to ad people I knew or spoke to once. Then I thought: if these people would be real friends, I would not have to look for them. So I dropped the account.
Luckily I never used my real name.
Drop it, you will only miss the drama.

Obviously

[Waffle Iron]

They can't determine if a photo is unique unless they don't really delete the photo from their servers. (They probably keep a "fingerprint" of the photo, which would be the most valuable part for spying on people anyway.)

Re:Obviously

[religionofpeas]

Where "fingerprint" means "the original photo"

Re:Obviously

[Oswald McWeany]

They can't determine if a photo is unique unless they don't really delete the photo from their servers. (They probably keep a "fingerprint" of the photo, which would be the most valuable part for spying on people anyway.)

How difficult is it to slightly modify a picture of a face to make a new "fingerprint". This sounds less about security and more about personal invasion.

Re:Obviously

[fahrbot-bot]

They can't determine if a photo is unique unless they don't really delete the photo from their servers. (They probably keep a "fingerprint" of the photo, which would be the most valuable part for spying on people anyway.)

How difficult is it to slightly modify a picture of a face to make a new "fingerprint". This sounds less about security and more about personal invasion.

Probably as a way to increase their ability to automatically tag/identify you in other photos.

Re:Obviously

[omnichad]

This. They're probably going to point a neural network at this face-fingerprint data and train their auto-tagger. Right now, bad lighting or an odd angle will throw off the automatic face recognition.

Re:Obviously

[Kierthos]

I'm considering, if I get this photo request on Facebook, to either upload a picture of a clown, or maybe a velociraptor.

Perhaps if I was feeling particularly sarcastic at the time, a picture of the back of my head.

Re:Obviously

[Bryansix]

I think you missed the point. They aren't saying the photo is unique to any you used before. They mean the photo is unique form anything indexed on the web. Most people who design bots have the bots steal photos from online for account creation purposes. They just search google images for "young woman" or "young man" and use a random image from the results. Google images and services like Tineye already have reverse image search capability. This just taps into that and checks to see if the image was just taken off the Internet or if you really took a new photo.

Re:Obviously

[Bryansix]

The picture of the back of your head would possibly work because it's unique. The photo of the clown or velociraptor probably exists on the Internet in which case the fingerprint is already in their data lake.

Re:Obviously

[sgrover]

Give me an image file, and I can generate an SHA hash for it that is relatively unique. Then I can delete the file. I can then compare other hashes for other pictures without having the original picture, or even being able to recreate the picture. But now that begs the question, why can't I just provide the hash generated from a client side app without passing the actual image? As a dev, my spidey sense is tingling - they want the pictures for something other than just the stated reason.

Re:Obviously

[TangoMargarine]

It would be pretty funny if people started all using a slightly munged photo of Mark Zuckerberg.

Re:Obviously

[religionofpeas]

Give me an image file, and I can generate an SHA hash for it that is relatively unique

Can you make it so that two different pictures of the same person result in the same SHA hash ? If not, it's useless.

Re:Obviously

[Oswald McWeany]

It would be pretty funny if people started all using a slightly munged photo of Mark Zuckerberg.

I'm tempted to create a facebook account just to do this!

Re:Obviously

[Oswald McWeany]

It would be pretty funny if people started all using a slightly munged photo of Mark Zuckerberg.

I'm tempted to create a facebook account just to do this!

Call Myself: Berg Zuckermark

Hi, we've lied repeatedly before but this time...

[Maxo-Texas]

Jeez.

Facebook has been caught lying and engaging in dubious behavior dozens of times and the founder says you have no right to privacy (but zealously protects his own privacy).

Wake UP!

Clash of the bots...

[Freischutz]

I'm going to enjoy seeing that thing clash with this one: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

HAHA

[Narcocide]

Reporter: Thus solving the problem once and for all.
Little girl: But...
Reporter: ONCE AND FOR ALL!

simple

[kiviQr]

CAPTCHA is evaluating your intelligence, if you upload your photo you fail (I mean you can enter glorious facebook).

How will their system handle

[Huge_UID]

my dick pics?

Re:How will their system handle

[Sporkinum]

ID you say? http://i.imgur.com/fKz6pKq.png

Facebook closed my account over this

[cstacy]

My FB account had about six "friends" on it: immediate family members. Didn't ever post anything or upload any information, just looked at photos they posted, pressed Like sometimes, and occasional IMs. I got this "upload a photo" roadblock, although it also said it was going to compare it to my Profile photo to make sure it was me. I didn't have any Profile photo, of course, so that's bullshit. Tried logging in three more times over the course of three weeks. Yesterday tried again, but the account has gone from suspended to terminated.

They said it was for "suspicious activity". (Of which of course there was none.)
I say it was because I failed to upload content for them to monetize.
Interesting business decision.

Re:Facebook closed my account over this

[redmasq]

My "photo" is a vector art drawing of myself. Since it would have been no fun tracing a picture of myself in Inkscape, I opted for kinda-sorta manga style. I doubt a non-human can make a comparison (I can make a face humanoid and maybe even identifiable, but art isn't my forte). More than likely automatic comparison is done when it identifies photographs. For everything else, the upload likely generates a ticket for a human to pull up and click 'Yes', 'No', or 'Maybe' with 'Yes' making the system happy, 'No' suspending the account with some message, and 'Maybe' to assign the ticket to someone else or pop up a call customer-service message.

Re:Facebook closed my account over this

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Wow! That is how you get your account Deleted! Very nice to know. My understanding was that Facebook never deletes the account. No matter how hard you try.

Re:Facebook closed my account over this

[Bryansix]

Did you know anybody can say anything on the Internet?

Re:Facebook closed my account over this

[cstacy]

Wow! That is how you get your account Deleted! Very nice to know. My understanding was that Facebook never deletes the account. No matter how hard you try.

I am sure they don't delete all the information that they collected, but the account is "deleted" in the sense that its existence and content is no longer seen by other users (like Deactivation) and you can never log into it again.

Take a photo of the chic your stalking

[wolfheart111]

Then upload it to facebook and get access to the account? Is that how this works?

But can FB reconstruct a hashed photo?

[billrp]

TFA says FB will hash an image and then delete the original. But to implement a similarity metric with previous "hashed" images of the same person, they will need a distance function that works on hashed values of all the photo's features that they capture. Unless they have conquered homomorphic encryption, FB will likely need to reverse the hashed features and then do similarity measures with previous photos, and will also be able to reconstruct "deleted" photos.

Re:But can FB reconstruct a hashed photo?

[markdavis]

>"TFA says FB will hash an image and then delete the original."

Does anyone really believe that? It is like thinking that if you are fingerprinted for some stupid reason it ISN'T going to end up in every local, state, and national database out there and be searched and compared to every time they have suspect print to run.

so, um...

[Kierthos]

Yeah, fine, this is meant to stop bots. Whatever.

What's keeping me from uploading a picture of someone else if I'm asked to? More to the point, how do they know it's a picture of me?

Same applies to bots. Yes, I'm completely and earnestly sincere in my belief that this will wholly stop bots from placing advertisements. At least until the people that run the bot networks find a workaround. You know, just like with other CAPTCHA methods.

I'm certain that Facebook has taken into consideration that people who run bot networks certainly would never use stock photos, online yearbook photos, or hell, pay people in a Third World shithole pennies to get a photo of them.

Nope

[cybersquid]

I will not comply.

Re:Nope

[GerardAtJob]

Same for me... hey, I don't even have a cellphone to take that photo lol

First My Phone Number, Now This?

[Tempest_2084]

Facebook kept badgering me for years to give them my phone number 'just in case' to which I repeatedly said no. Finally they stopped bugging me about it and all was good for a few weeks. Then I got a new notice that said 'help verify that this is your number and keep your account up to date'. Lo and behold that was indeed my phone number, but I never gave it to them. I don't know where they scraped it from, but they got it. That left me creeped out for a long time and I considered closing my account. In the end I kept it, but I watched what I posted and really dropped my usage. If I get this prompt I'll drop it completely. I'm not a social media junkie, so I'll live. In fact the only reason I'm still on it is for a few interest groups that I'm involved with who moved to FB (terrible decision) and so my family can tell me who died and who had a kid. Both of which I could live without.

Re:First My Phone Number, Now This?

[Anonymous Coward]

clearly somebody with the facebook app has your name, email, and phone number in their contact list.

Re:First My Phone Number, Now This?

[Tempest_2084]

I'm sure they do. It's kind of unnerving that they could get the info that way though. I'm starting to think investing in tinfoil hats might not be that crazy after all. :P

Re:First My Phone Number, Now This?

[FrankHaynes]

When a buddy created his FB account years ago he called me up and was raving about how REALLY NEAT it was that it presented a metric crapload of his friends without him having to lift a finger. After I picked my jaw up off the floor I explained how this was not neat, but rather creepy and scary. He couldn't understand what I meant.

So, yes, one of your "friends" is complicit with FB in gathering intel on The Resistance. I choose my irl friends carefully and on those rare occasions when I'm not acting the hermit I make sure to avoid getting in camera range of the inevitable group photo. FB can go fuck themselves with a hot poker.

Re:First My Phone Number, Now This?

[AHuxley]

Wait till it gets to no one could internet or social media unless he had the mark that showed their picture had been uploaded.
From Fedbook to Photo Book.

Re:First My Phone Number, Now This?

[character sequence]

Or WhatsApp. It scrapes every user's contacts and shares the data with fb. The nice thing about this is you don't need WhatsApp yourself, any one of your friends with the app, your name and phone number will do https://www.cnet.com/uk/how-to...

GANs

[dejaniv]

https://youtu.be/XOxxPcy5Gr4

No problem

[nospam007]

Clearly a job for the morphing apps.

This is great news

[argStyopa]

...I'm looking forward to them deleting my account ...finally.

Good thing I dropped Facebook years ago

[bettodavis]

Since the day they asked me for 'my real name' instead of a pseudonym my friends and family know, even threatening me with blocking my account.

"Fine". I told myself, and proceeded to promptly close my account and never looked back.

Seems like it isn't getting any better of late.

Re:Good thing I dropped Facebook years ago

[jedidiah]

Since they can ban your account for trivial violations of their group think, the value of having only a single account linked to your true identity is very limited.

They also seem to be the anti-slashdot. The most trollish responses get the most attention. So off topic nonsense gets filtered to the top and useful stuff gets hidden.This is strangely contradictory to their complaint/moderation polices.

Re:Good thing I dropped Facebook years ago

[FrankHaynes]

They pulled that crap with me a few months back, so I dutifully fabricated one of the accepted documents for proof displaying my pseudonym and they reactivated my account. I would've let them keep it suspended forever if I weren't required to stay in touch with a group that had the bad sense to plop its home down on FB instead of some other host that is less imposing.

Wait wait wait

[ckatko]

Wait.

You mean FB, the company that vacuums up everyone's personal and private information... is going to require us to GIVE THEM ADDITIONAL private information every time they want you to "prove" you are yourself? They're going to have an entire compilation of your same face, with different lighting angles, different positions/age/makeup/etc.

I'm honestly at a loss for who is more evil at this point. Uber, Google, or Facebook.

Re:Wait wait wait

[FrankHaynes]

Facebook, by far.

There are alternatives to Uber.

Google doesn't seem to have the same insidious nature as FB and indeed has alternatives.

But FB enjoys the network effect that no other platform can duplicate; if you're not on FB you are "missing out". I could start another FB replacement tomorrow, but nobody would be on it, therefore it would provide no value and would therefore attract no users.

FB is like those creatures left behind by The Shadows on Babylon 5 that would infiltrate your nervous system, watching and controlling everything you do. They become so deeply entwined in the body that they are impossible to remove. That's the way FB is to the body of society.

I don't see the problem

[rsilvergun]

I mean, there's already plenty of good quality pics I'd be willing to upload.

Re:I don't see the problem

[Whorhay]

I was thinking that a retouched version of the old Slashdot link trolling picture would be optimal.

Kodachrome

[jabberw0k]

A new photo of me? I'll have to wait a week to get this film developed, and then go to Walgreens to have it scanned so I can put it on a usb stick to bring it home. Right sure.

Re:Kodachrome

[almitydave]

For people without immediate access to digital cameras, they'll provide a phone number so you can just hold your face up to a fax machine...

We'll check it and then permanently delete it

[Oligonicella]

Bullshit. FaceBook has a proven record of lying.

SubjectIsSubject

[p0p0]

May soon? It's already happened.
I just made a new account in September for business use, and before I had time to even put any photos or information in, they locked me out of my account and demanded a photo of my face to verify my identity.
How could that possibly work, when I hadn't even uploaded a picture to compare it to? 3 days later they finally unblocked the account, but then proceeded to do it 4 more time, each taking an extra day to unlock.

There also seems to be more going on, since I edited one of the photos to include the text "stop blocking my f*cking account" and Facebook refused to upload the photo. The site would just idle. Choosing another image, resized but without the text and the same filename did work and I didn't refresh the page or anything.
It's sketchy as hell and I put the absolute bare minimum information I could, with only a couple friends added but I'm sure they still know everything about me anyway.

No problem

[Drunkulus]

I'll be happy to upload more photos, there are plenty on the wayback machine- www.goatse.cx.

Just wear Guy Fawkes masks

[turp182]

Remember, remember, the 18th of May, not November
The 2012 "You have no privacy" plot
I know of no reason why Zuckerberg's season
Should NOT be killed off and forgot.

That's the IPO date by the way.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/...

Easily automated

[HalAtWork]

What exactly is stopping anyone from uploading them photos that were morphed between two existing images? This can easily be automated.

no. freaking. way.

[swschrad]

this is going way too far. next they'll put biosamplers in your phones to check your DNA, and it will cost you $50 per login for a replacement sensor.

About ready to delete my FB and Twitter accounts.

[Chas]

Not just because of this.
But because the sheer, unbridled stupidity emanating from the platform is starting to affect people I see as friends.
And I don't want to witness it.

commentsubject

[Falos]

"we'll delete the picture"

Jesus Christ. Son of Josesph and Mary, holy son of God, etc, I am invoking the name of a sacred figure because at least you guys should know that means jack, shit, and diddly fuckall.

They'll use it to cross-reference the rest of their massive data, validate associate collaborate in ways we can't possibly predict. Cuff Example: Code that makes soft conclusions re: ancestry, marking potential associations by facial data that relate well with genetics.

They're use it to store everything useful about the picture. They have the picture's data.

They'll delete the actual jpg. Whoopdeefuckingdoo. It's a waste of space after being scraped, of COURSE they delete it.

We'll delete the photo

[viperidaenz]

But keep the metadata for future facial recognition of you in other people's photos.

NSA Needs Better Photos?

[silvergeek]

Perhaps the NSA (and others paying for information) need better photos. Facebook has gone way to far for this old paranoid geek.

Re:Reed-Solomon Anyone?

[viperidaenz]

They don't need to keep your photo. They have no use for it.
What they have a use for is training their recognition algorithms to be able to recognise you in any picture.
That's going to help them further enhance your profile from pictures and videos other people upload. Even if they don't tag you, or even know you.

Re:About ready to delete my FB and Twitter account

[viperidaenz]

You can't delete your profile. You can only delete your access to it.
Facebook will keep gathering data on you via other users though.

I don't believe them

[AndyKron]

"We'll check it and then permanently delete it from our servers". Bullshit.

A hash isn't necessarily a cryptographic one

[redmasq]

You can scale an image to a fixed size, divide it up into parts, take a histogram of each part (Fourier transform), and shove it into an indexed database (might need to duplicate also do greyscale separately). If another image has most of the parts' histograms within a certain arbitrary percentage, the picture is probable that it is the same (no need to directly compare the original images). That, in the loosest way possible, can be considered a "hash comparison." Of course, I'm pretty sure Facebook has something more advanced than that bit of minor experimentation. Once confirmed not to be the same as a previous image, just do the normal built-in facial recognition. If unable to automatically confirm, send it to queue for an underpaid human to handle.

Not really

[bagofbeans]

You just stopped your own future access to your account. FB still has it.

Synergy

[markana]

How long until they combine this with their "anti-revenge porn" scheme? Where you'll have to upload a new nude picture every time you log in. They'll be sure to delete them, after the admins have verified the identity of the user ("yup, they got a mole in the right place"), and checked the ownership of the photos.

(FB - this is not a suggestion, btw).

This is the sort of thinking that comes from living too long inside a bubble - with double-thick, clue-proof walls.

Dear Facebook

[nuckfuts]

Here is a recent photograph of my naked ass. Please apply lip marks and return it to me for verification.

Re:Facebook made me do this 'CAPTCHA' recently.

[scradam]

Also, they have my mobile phone number and Visa credit card number on file. I don't understand why they couldn't have just verified my identity via those means.
  I've never even posted anything strange on Facebook (or much of anything at all). I don't know why they singled me out.

You can count in MicroSoft in that list

[ffkom]

You buy a gaming console for some child, and they require you to create an email account for it - which is a bad thing on its own. Then, 24h after that account was created, they say it's "temporarily suspended" and demand a private mobile phone number to send you a "verification code". This is just the same crap: Corporations trying to bully you into giving them sensitive private information. (And so the console was returned to the person who brought it as a gift, and ultimately returned for a full refund.)

All those people who modeled for stock photos...

[dizzy8578]

Will never get back in their account.

Re:Facebook made me do this 'CAPTCHA' recently.

[qwerty shrdlu]

You are sure you sent this stuff to Facebook, right? Right?

LOL....

[MerlTurkin]

Screw facebook. How many 'tards will do it?

NOPE

[Indigo]

Nope nope nopity nope nope.

Re:About ready to delete my FB and Twitter account

[Chas]

They're welcome to what they've collected so far.

I'll just make sure that the data ages out eventually.

Kinda like those car insurance calls from when you were price shopping 4 years ago...

Here's the fallacy

[slick7]

Trust, and you will be trusted; said the liar to the fool. Let's look at this another way. Identify yourself so that we, the faceless we, can know you are not a robot, or better yet, a living entity. The Supreme Court declared corporations are entities. Yet they have no "face". How does one reconcile the discrepancy? 1984 is a warning, not a blueprint. There are way too many faceless entities out there such as the CIA, NSA, FBI, and a host of others, the Cosa Nostra, Mossad, ISIS, the Federal Reserve, the Black Nobility of Europe, the illuminati; yes, there are figureheads, however the rank and file members remain in the shadows. Also what stops the faceless from using a false face, like your photo image? I cannot imagine where a photo could be acquired. Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, any television or closed circuit feed. Smartphones, cameras, official identity pictures. Do you get the "picture"?

As if I'd believe Facebook would delete data!

[PlaynBass]

Give FB my photo? Not a chance! They already track my every move. They probably already have my photo. I have deleted my account on FB before, and wonder of wonders, All my old 'deleted' data mysteriously reappeared.

Facebook is a bunch of lying liars who lie with their every corporate breath.