171–180 of 184 posts
[1] "... a specially trained representative from our Community Operations team reviews and hashes the image, ..."
The better solution is to have the image hashed and NOT sent to facebook. If the hash matches an existing image [A]. If the hash isn't found [B]. [A]: human can review the image they already have [B]: Facebook waits until someone uploads an image that matches and then reviews the image (as normal) but with a marker alerting the problem. The benefit is that people NOT affected won't have to upload lots of images of th…
There was an excellent Twitter thread on why they didn't do this: https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/928740488395608065 The salient bit: > A quick note to everybody who says 'calculate the hash locally': > A) Photo fingerprinting algorithms are usually not included in clients to prevent the development of circumvention techniques. > B) Humans need to review to prevent adversarial reporting. Further down the thread…
Second, security by obscurity is not a good thing. Not running the algorithm locally, not to mention producing the source to their algorithm is not going to help in the long run.
Third, regardless of whether the source of the algorithm is known or not, it would be a simple task to upload a test image of oneself, and then attempt to circumvent the algorithm using dummy accounts.
Fourth, if someone abuses the service by uploading the hashes of a benign images, it can be reported at that time. No need to pre-emptively guard against this.
Back a long time ago, if you had a Polaroid you might have some reasonable expectation that picture was the only one... but now? Once it is digital you cannot guarantee a single thing that happens to it unless you do it offline.
Why would anyone want to take that risk?
Is there anyone else out here scratching their head as to why anyone would think it's a good idea to actually take (or otherwise) send (let's be honest, here) pornographic images of themselves to anyone else? Back a long time ago, if you had a Polaroid you might have some reasonable expectation that picture was the only one... but now? Once it is digital you cannot guarantee a single thing that happens to it unless y…
Is there anyone else out here scratching their head as to why anyone would think it's a good idea to actually take (or otherwise) send (let's be honest, here) pornographic images of themselves to anyone else? Back a long time ago, if you had a Polaroid you might have some reasonable expectation that picture was the only one... but now? Once it is digital you cannot guarantee a single thing that happens to it unless y…
Your threat model is not my threat model.
The better solution is to have the image hashed and NOT sent to facebook. If the hash matches an existing image [A]. If the hash isn't found [B]. [A]: human can review the image they already have [B]: Facebook waits until someone uploads an image that matches and then reviews the image (as normal) but with a marker alerting the problem. The benefit is that people NOT affected won't have to upload lots of images of th…
There was an excellent Twitter thread on why they didn't do this: https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/928740488395608065 The salient bit: > A quick note to everybody who says 'calculate the hash locally': > A) Photo fingerprinting algorithms are usually not included in clients to prevent the development of circumvention techniques. > B) Humans need to review to prevent adversarial reporting. Further down the thread…
uhm...this seems like a bit of a flaw in the plan
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A) I think we're talking about modification-resistant fingerprinting methods, not just a simple hash of the data. B) That's a support nightmare; it would be nearly trivial to start submitting false reports from a ton of accounts without establishing a pattern so those accounts could easily be ignored. Regardless, how do you prove that you "own an image" (what does that even mean?) and that it was reported as an "inti…
The solution is to hash it locally and send the hash to Facebook without saving a local copy. Simple as that. Sure, someone could still do a lot of work to intercept or reverse engineer it and make an app to circumvent the hashing. But even if such an app existed, it would be obscure and people trying to upload unauthorized pics wouldn't bother or even know it exists. If you've got pics you don't want on the internet…
Assuming you were the one to take the pictures, of course, and not got them from your ex-partner that's trying to pressure you by threatening to publish them on FB.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - The user uses a JS solution to hash the images on the client, without the image being uploaded You have to trust facebook in either case, each time you do it. Either to handle your nude pics properly or to serve you javascript that does what they claim it does, every single time. On the other hand an open source desktop application only needs to be audited once and then can be validated based on a hash. In browse…
You could examine network traffic to confirm that not enough data is sent to reconstitute the picture
Tricky. Sending them all of your potentially leaked embarrassing photos so that they can store them and prevent them from leaking out. If they get hacked now someone has a lifetime supply of blackmail material. Not clear if the cure is better than the ailment.
From the fine article: "We store the photo hash—not the photo—to prevent someone from uploading the photo in the future. If someone tries to upload the image to our platform, like all photos on Facebook, it is run through a database of these hashes and if it matches we do not allow it to be posted or shared."