{"id":19032,"date":"2017-11-08T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T07:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/?p=19032"},"modified":"2019-11-15T13:39:13","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T11:39:13","slug":"photos-for-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/19032\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook wants your nudes"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve all heard about cases when someone\u2019s ex reveals their intimate photos online without their consent. Even celebrities are not immune<\/a>, and their leaked images keep tabloids well fed.<\/p>\n

For most users, the release of such private images \u2014 revenge porn \u2014 can feel like the end of the world, and in fact, a few resulting suicides have brought the issue very much into the mainstream news. It should go without saying that such leaks represent a huge privacy violation and have no place in a civilized society. However, leaks do happen.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Facebook came up with an interesting approach aiming to prevent intimate photos from being published without their subjects\u2019 consent, at least on Facebook or Instagram, or over Facebook Messenger. The idea the social network came up with and is currently working on in collaboration with the Australian government is to suggest users send the photos they are concerned about to the company itself.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wait \u2026 what?!<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

Yes, you got that right. Here are the details: Facebook\u2019s plan is to encrypt<\/a> private images using hashing<\/a>, so that if someone sends or publishes that image through Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram, the service can detect the image by comparing its hash sum to those in Facebook\u2019s database and interfere with its transmission.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s e-safety commissioner told ABC News<\/a> how the scheme is supposed to work: Facebook will suggest that users send their intimate photos through Facebook Messenger \u2014 to themselves. The images, in being sent, will be hashed. Subsequently, if someone tries to upload an image that has the same hash value, it won\u2019t be visible to anyone. Facebook claims that the end-to-end encryption used in Messenger (in the mobile app, not on desktops) ensures the photos will be secure, because it excludes intermediaries, and that the images themselves won\u2019t be stored, making them immune to theft.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Will it really work?<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

Facebook has announced the pilot program in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and Canada so far, so we don\u2019t yet know how effective it will actually be. On the one hand, it has real potential as a solution to this privacy threat. On the other hand, questions remain about how we can be sure that it won\u2019t become a way of encrypting someone else\u2019s public photos. Because end-to-end encryption doesn\u2019t allow Facebook to look at the photos, it won\u2019t be able to use machine-learning algorithms to distinguish, for example, a nude photo from a nonnude one.<\/p>\n

And moreover, a lot of people still have concerns about providing their photos to a third party, be it Facebook or any other company, and about the security of any technology they don\u2019t know much about \u2014 especially in case of Facebook, where several users\u2019<\/a> private photos have already been leaked<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Is there a better way? For most people, there is:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Whether you take nude or otherwise potentially compromising pictures of yourself is none of our business. They are, however, a tempting target, and so well worth second thoughts. If the photos don\u2019t exist, they can\u2019t leak.<\/li>\n
  2. If you do take pictures of that kind, store them offline, on an encrypted storage device.<\/li>\n
  3. If you want to share something that can potentially be used to shame or otherwise harm you in the wrong hands \u2014 or hands that become wrong, say, after a breakup \u2014 be prepared; you may face difficult consequences. Once you\u2019ve uploaded something, anything, to the Internet, it might become public, no matter how secure the online service. There\u2019s also the human factor, and there is no such thing as an absolutely secure system.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Want to protect your intimate photos from ever going public? Facebook has a suggestion: Upload them yourself!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2455,"featured_media":19033,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1788],"tags":[597,20,2729,2730,43,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-19032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-privacy","8":"tag-cryptography","9":"tag-facebook","10":"tag-network-security","11":"tag-nudes","12":"tag-privacy","13":"tag-social-media"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"en-za","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/19032\/"},{"hreflang":"en-in","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.in\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/11783\/"},{"hreflang":"en-ae","url":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/9807\/"},{"hreflang":"en-us","url":"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/14007\/"},{"hreflang":"en-gb","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/12198\/"},{"hreflang":"es-mx","url":"https:\/\/latam.kaspersky.com\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/12011\/"},{"hreflang":"es","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.es\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/14768\/"},{"hreflang":"ru","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.ru\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/19172\/"},{"hreflang":"tr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.tr\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/4388\/"},{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/20063\/"},{"hreflang":"fr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.fr\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/9754\/"},{"hreflang":"pt-br","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.br\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/9853\/"},{"hreflang":"pl","url":"https:\/\/plblog.kaspersky.com\/photos-for-privacy\/8507\/"},{"hreflang":"de","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.de\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/15222\/"},{"hreflang":"ja","url":"https:\/\/blog.kaspersky.co.jp\/photos-for-privacy\/18712\/"},{"hreflang":"en-au","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.au\/blog\/photos-for-privacy\/19043\/"}],"acf":[],"banners":"","maintag":{"url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/tag\/privacy\/","name":"privacy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2455"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19032"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24025,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19032\/revisions\/24025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}