Golden Guinea Pigs
Social media now play a big part in our social interactions. For the past 15 years, different media have emerged. What if it was just a brilliant way to capture data about you?
Internet, social media and technology have changed our life. It’s easier than ever to share pictures, opinions and preferences with our friends, strangers… and even businesses! Big companies, like Amazon, develop smarter and gainful marketing strategies as they get to know you better. Although some people aren’t on social media, surfing the web is enough to share their data.
You might say : ‘’So what? Big Data Mining isn’t a secret for anyone.’’ Yes, you’re right. Still, some strategies to extract more personal information might be sneaky. Let’s take the #10yearschallenge as an example. Monday morning, I woke up and I was submerged under a tide of selfies. This fun game went viral instantly. Therefore, thousands of aging faces have been shared on Facebook and Instagram. Isn’t it good timing to test facial recognition technology? This is the hypothesis of Kate O’Neill, a journalist for Wired magazine.
Mirror, mirror..
Some softwares are able to use algorithms to compare a picture to a stored one, in order to verify an identity. Consequently, this technology can be very useful for safety control. Moreover, facial age progression could help with finding missing kids, which is a laudable use. However, businesses could utilize this technology for advertising or tracking, so that our insurance company might follow our health closely!
Personally, I’m a bit scared about what can happen with those data in the future. Even though humans are a rich source of data, businesses or hackers may use them in a dishonest way. As we have no more privacy, who we are speaking to, what we are eating, where we are going and how much we are spending are no longer a secret. What if a hacker accesses my bank account and uses my picture and informations he has gathered to confirm my identity? I think identity theft will get worse as companies develop more sophisticated facial recognition and progression technology.
Some of the innocent moves we make today may backfire on us one day. Parents are proud of their children and they share tons of pictures of them on the web. As a consequence, those future adults have already lost their privacy. Even if they won’t be on social media or on the Internet when they grow up, technology will be able to know how they may look like … Scary huh?
That being said about the #10yearschallenge, we should be careful of our interactions with technology and social media. We have to think about the data we give freely and how it can be used or sold by businesses.