ClarityCheck, a facial recognition tool for which it’s hard to think of a legitimate use, has reportedly left millions of facial images publicly available on the Internet in a major privacy breach.
It is likely that most of the victims did not know that their photos were uploaded to the website, and never received their consent…
The service allows anyone to upload someone’s photo to run a reverse search of things like social media sites to identify them. ClarityCheck requires people to agree that they have permission to upload photos, but security researcher Jeremiah Fowler said. There is a line He was extremely skeptical about this.
He notes that the service is clearly designed for identification, and that people are generally not looking to identify themselves or people they (already) know.
The website includes blog posts Find people on dating sites by email And How to find someone on Hinge (even without a match).
Farrell said ExpressVPN More than nine million image files uploaded to ClarityCheck have been left public on cloud servers for months, noting that these are primarily facial images, although they include duplication in the form of cropped and scaled images.
I recently discovered a publicly available database that is not password protected or encrypted. The database contains approximately 9,042,977 image files totaling 450.2GB of data. Exposed records consist primarily of facial images stored in folders labeled “Faces” and “Profiles.” In the limited sample of exposed images that I reviewed as part of the investigation, I noticed the faces of adults, teenagers and children (…)
Many of the uploaded photos I see may originate from third-party sources such as personal profiles, social media accounts, dating app accounts, screenshots or photos uploaded by third-party users.
He traced the database to ClarityCheck, and the company acknowledged ownership and said it had secured the data.
Take 9to5Mac
One risk identified by Fowler is that photos and associated identities can be used by scammers to create fake social media posts to deceive family and friends. A very common scam is impersonating a family member in an emergency situation that requires immediate remittances. Access to facial images can certainly help facilitate this type of fraud.
We previously outlined 9 steps you can take to protect yourself from hackers and scammers.
Photo by Onur Binay on removed
FTC: We use automatic income affiliate links. More.
