The Electronic Frontier Foundation has weighed in on the recent Appellate Court ruling that cleared the way for a class action lawsuit against Facebook. The lawsuit alleges that Facebook gathered biometric information from users without achieving proper consent. The facts of the case haven’t changed since earlier reports, but the EFF’s breakdown does help explain…
The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has cleared the way for a class action lawsuit against Facebook, ruling that “Facebook users located in Illinois for whom Facebook created and stored a face template after June 7, 2011,” are indeed a certified class entitled to legal representation. The ruling reaffirms the initial decision of Northern…
The Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Facebook, and Microsoft together made unlikely partners in a recent joint briefing to the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors. The briefing revolved around the efforts taken by these organizations to prevent the kind of meddling seen…
Attorneys General from the US and Mexico are poised to unveil a new facial recognition system designed to track victims of human trafficking this week. According to a Hypopotamus report, the system will allow families to upload photos of missing persons, and will then use these photos to identify individuals caught on surveillance feeds. The…
May has come to an end and with it must go On-Device Authentication Month, our five week focus on the biometric authentication technologies replacing passwords online and across the vertical markets. For the entire month we dedicated feature articles, industry news coverage and the latest entry in our renowned webinar series to the on-device authentication…
Facebook’s legal team made a Hail Mary last week to delay its biometric class action lawsuit, and it has now scored a touchdown: A panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to review whether the lawsuit really should qualify for class action status. The decision essentially pauses the judicial proceedings…
Facebook has become the latest tech giant to join the FIDO Alliance Board of Directors. The company’s support for FIDO and its standards is not altogether new. Near the start of last year, Facebook enabled support for FIDO-compliant two-factor authentication via security keys such as the USB keys offered by Yubico. The small pieces of…
Facebook is going to have to face a class action lawsuit over the alleged misuse of its facial recognition technology, a US District judge has ruled. The legal challenge is years old at this point, having taken shape in the spring of 2015. It revolves around Facebook’s ‘tag suggestions’ feature, which uses face biometrics to…
Facebook is providing more information to users about new facial recognition features of the social media platform that were first announced at the end of last year. The features are designed to automatically detect when pictures of a user are uploaded to the platform without their knowledge, or when their image is used as a…
Facebook is acquiring Confirm.io, a US startup specializing in multi-factor digital authentication. Based in Boston, the startup is just three years old, but has made a name for itself with its mobile-based, biometric ID verification technology, which uses facial recognition to verify end users’ government-issued identity documents. The firm made perhaps its first big splash…
Facebook appears to be acknowledging growing user demand for more control over the digital identities in its launch of a new facial recognition-powered feature that can inform individuals when photos of them are uploaded to the social media platform without their knowledge. In its official announcement of the feature, Facebook’s Applied Machine Learning Director Joaquin Quiñonero…
Facebook has just launched a new feature that will alert users whenever a photo of them is uploaded to the site, even if they weren’t tagged in it. The feature is based on facial recognition, with AI technology automatically matching the biometric data in a given picture to what’s on file for users who have…
“While Facebook’s use of facial recognition has previously landed the company in legal trouble over privacy issues, such technology is increasingly becoming mainstream, especially in the world of consumer tech…” Facebook appears to be expanding its use of facial recognition-based security, with multiple reports of users being prompted to submit a selfie photo for identity…
Facebook is testing out a new security feature leveraging facial recognition for account recovery. The feature is currently being tested by a select group of users, and is aimed specifically at situations in which individuals have been locked out of their accounts. It uses the camera of a trusted device – ie. a smartphone or…
Facebook is getting ready to make a big push into consumer hardware with plans to launch a new video chat device, an Amazon Echo rival, and potentially wearables, too. As Business Insider reports, the major short-term focus is ‘Aloha’, a video chat device featuring a touchscreen and facial recognition technology. It’s meant to compete against…
Facebook is embracing FIDO-compliant two-factor authentication with devices like YubiKeys, with Facebook security engineer Brad Hill calling it a way “to make logging into Facebook even more secure.” Effective today, users can register their 2FA devices to ensure that their account login process adheres to FIDO U2F standards, with Facebook prompting such users to tap their…
Facebook has acquired a facial biometrics startup called FacioMetrics. The startup was founded only last year by students at Carnegie Mellon, and offers machine learning technology designed to analyze faces in real time. The technology allows for filter effects like face-swapping and dog noses to be superimposed onto images of a subject’s face, similar to…
“The system takes advantage of facial recognition technology to compare a registrant’s selfie against images from other social media, the user’s driver license, and other public records.” Facebook has only just launched its online trading Marketplace, and a third-party seller verification tool has already emerged. Called Trust Stamp, it’s designed to make sure that sellers are…
The Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec) has announced a new partnership with Facebook that could help generate excitement about the country’s May 9th election. Speaking about the new partnership to the media, Comelec chairman Andres Bautista and Facebook Public Policy for Asia Pacific head Elizabeth Hernandez framed it as a means to facilitate dialogue among citizens,…