A new study out of Carnegie Mellon University warns of the possible dangers of tagging photos online, and reports that the risk of identity theft rises when social media profiles get paired with facial recognition software.
According to privacy expert Alessandro Acquisti, Assistant Professor of IT and Public Policy, “combining this kind of software with social media profiles makes it possible to easily identify individuals and gain access to their personal information.”
“A person’s face is the veritable link between her offline and online identities,” explains Acquisti. “When we share tagged photos of ourselves online, it becomes possible for others to link our face to our names in situations where we would normally expect anonymity.”
