Okay, I dont know if anyone is aware of the developement of an Application for the Android and I believe the I-phone too… This application, called Recognizr, appears to be able to recognise a person from a photograph taken with the phone’s camera. I believe something like this has already been tried with existing contacts..which I see as a little pointless… surely if you can see the person you’re trying to ring… whats the point of ringing them?
I digress… Okay, it appears to be able to recognise a person from a photograph, then, this is the slightly worrying bit, gather information on that person from a collection of Social Networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube (and Last.fm for some reason… bizarre) then present this information, so I’m guessing it’ll come up with name, date of birth etc. But it also displays the following:
Mobile phone number and Email address…………… okay, am I the only one a little concerned about this?!
I’m not really one for privacy, everything about me is available on the internet for all to see. My facebook page contains all my email addresses, mobile phone and house numbers, from my Picasa album you’d be able to tell where I live from Geotagged photographs.. not a problem for me, your welcome to know where I live, its 19 Meadow Street, Treforest. Your welcome to have that information because if anyone really wants to stalk me.. they’ll get very bord, unless they have an unhealthy obsession with making cups of tea or playing on the xbox… So i’m an unlikely advocate of caution here.
Now, my initial thoughts on this were that it' would only be able to recognise people who’d registered with the application, and would only give out information authorised by the individual. However, thinking about it, it has the possibility to be a real security concern. A link with Facebook would give it access to images of a large proportion of the world population (dont know what the current registration figures of Facebook are… but its a big percent). now, with that link comes access to people’s tagged pictures. Linking a picture to a face give the application the possibility of IDing people who haven't even registered on the application…… And this is the bit that concerns me a bit… People who’ve registered with Facebook, with the thought that they’re personal information is limited only to their friends could unwittingly be giving this information to anyone and everyone…
When this application is release I will be trying it, just to see if its actually as dangerous as I think. There has to be some measure of privacy control surely? If not they’ve just created the most powerful tool to stalkers ever.
Oh, here is the Youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GqJHaNRlas&feature=player_embedded
