Privacy-stealing smartphone app reveals all – using facial recognition


(Cyberwar.news) Technology is definitely a double-edged sword, useful in so many ways but also very invasive. A new app for smartphones is definitely the latter.

As reported by the UK’s Daily Mirror, Blippar is an app that uses your smartphone’s camera to reveal more about the world through augmented reality:

Today, the company behind the app has announced that facial recognition will be introduced so you can scan other people and reveal their profile.

Billed as the world’s first facial recognition for phones

The profiles are strictly an opt-in only experience, meaning members of the public have to go through a process to get their faces recognised and turned on before they become “blippable”.

They can switch their profiles ‘on’ and ‘off’ as they wish.

So, did you pick up on the obvious privacy concern? If you go out in public you have to actually do something (switch your profile to ‘off’) to not be “blippable.” What if you forget? And what happens when some tech guru figures out how to bypass the “off” switch (because that’s coming…if it’s not already here)?

The biggest casualty in the Information Age is the loss of privacy – whether we voluntarily surrender it with endless posts to social media sites, or unwillingly lose it thanks to a plethora of devices that allow our movements to be tracked (in real time) and now, our faces and profiles to be lifted, quite possibly without our permission.

Maybe the best thing we can all do is turn off our devices and just stay home.

More:

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