Fawkes: a New Tool to Avoid Facial Recognition

Privacy is one of the factors that most worries users when browsing the Internet. On the web we can run into many types of attacks and problems that can compromise our information. However, we can also count on multiple tools and functions with which we can protect ourselves. In this article we echo a new software that they have created with the aim of avoiding facial recognition that many platforms use. This is Fawkes and we are going to explain how he works.

Fawkes, the tool to avoid facial recognition

Surely on some occasion we have uploaded a photo to social networks such as Facebook and it automatically invites us to tag the people who appear in that image. It is the facial recognition that many services use and that, for many, violates privacy.

Fawkes

Basically that means those platforms are going to have our faces collected. They will use functions and features with which we can identify ourselves automatically. Does that mean privacy? Not for many users.

That’s where Fawkes comes in. It is a tool developed by the SAND Lab, from the University of Chicago, which allows users to control how their images are used and thus avoid facial recognition .

It uses an algorithm that allows slightly altering the pixels of the image. In this way they change it enough so that Artificial Intelligence detects it as different, but not so much as to be perceptible by the human eye. Basically a person would still see that photograph the same, but not a computer equipment.

The goal is to slightly change the look of that photo so that it can’t be used by facial recognition tools. We have given the example of Facebook, but there are many more platforms that can have this type of functions that for many is an attempt against the privacy of users on the Internet.

Evitar el reconocimiento facial

The importance of protecting data on the network

As we have said, there are many factors that can influence our privacy . Many marketing companies are constantly looking for ways to collect information from users.

In this way they could include us in spam lists, send targeted advertising or even sell the data to third parties for profit. This is something that affects us in our day to day, since simply by browsing we are leaving our personal information exposed.

Luckily we can make use of tools that protect us, beyond this Fawkes that they have just developed and which we echo. There are many programs that we can integrate into our daily lives in order to prevent information theft, to prevent hackers from accessing our computers.

Security is linked to privacy and therefore we must always keep our equipment safe. There are many types of attacks that we can suffer when browsing and we must take action. We leave you an article where we talk about how to maintain security and privacy on social networks. They are platforms where our data can be easily stolen if we do not take action.

Source> Hack Read