Russian FindFace App is a Privacy Nightmare

The machine-learning capability that social networks are gaining is becoming a privacy nightmare. Anyone can take your photo then find everything about you via social networks. That’s exactly what the Russian site FindFace is doing.

FindFace is bringing a very powerful facial recognition technology to VK, formerly known as VKontakte, the “Facebook of Russia.”

What worries privacy advocates is that the site has a high accuracy rate when it comes to identifying a total stranger simply by snapping their picture and uploading to the FindFace site.

Antivirus firm Kaspersky wrote in a blog post, “If you upload ideal photos, that were taken when your target was posing, everything works just great. The program has successfully found 9 of 10 test ‘victims’ in the office.”

The algorithm powering the facial recognition is developed by Russia-based N-Tech.Lab, which beat Google’s face recognition software at the MegaFace challenge.