Alec Couros used FindFace.ru to search VK.com for profiles matching his photos and found at least 22 results, many fake scammer accounts. A Russian photographer found roughly 100 subway passengers the same way. The facial-recognition tool works on VK but not Facebook, raising privacy concerns that Google Image Search and TinEye don't match.
Questions this video answers
FindFace (FindFace.ru)
VK.com (a Russian social network)
At least 22 profiles
About 100 people
Chapters
Hi, everyone. Stephen Ransom just Facebooked me an article titled human trafficking Big Data turned you and me into goods for sale. So the idea of facial recognition technology, how far it's come, and in particular there's a piece of the article. I mean, the focus of the article is on a particular project called you'd Face as Big Data. And if you keep on following the links from the article, you'll be taken to this PC World article where there's a Russian photographer who basically created a little bit of a project where he photographed about 100 people who happen to be sitting across from him on the subway. And then he used a tool called Fine Face to use their facial recognition technology to search for those particular faces on a Russian social network called vk.com and I happen to know about VK because many of the victims of scammers who were the scammers were using photographs of me. Noted that these profiles are on VK on this kind of Russian Facebook. So I decided to go to this Fine Face or ru. I guess I wasn't able to find out to read much, a whole lot. I don't. I'm not able to actually see any English or English translation on this, on this page, but it was fairly user friendly. I just kind of guessed. So I went in. I had a vk.com account because of the times I had to go in there. I was assuming that this is an upload photograph, which it was. I basically found a photograph of me that I thought would be useful for searching and I uploaded it and it does a search on the website vk.com and here it is. There are profiles all over of me. These are all profiles on vk.com of photographs of me, but certainly not my profiles. I think the first 20, 20 or so are definitely me. Then there's me over here. I'm not sure. I guess there's a few other people that apparently have some. There's another Adrian, that's me down there. So these, there's at least 22 profiles on this, searching this particular image. And I'm assuming if I use other images it might get slightly different search results. But obviously I'm a big hit on VK.com and the scammers are certainly going at it, not just in Facebook but all over the place. And so this might be something for you to check out just to give a sense. Maybe you are a popular social network dater on Russian social network. I also wonder why Facebook isn't giving us this ability. I mean, if BK can do it I couldn't imagine. It should be very, very easy to search my image right across Facebook and and for me to very quickly see where my Facebook profiles appear or my photographs appear on Facebook. Certainly you can do it with TinEye.com or Google Image Search, but it doesn't actually search Facebook. But to actually search Facebook with something like this would be certainly useful. It also is a bit scary on a number of different levels. Anyway, thought I'd share that. Thanks, Stephen, for the take.
