Fighting for privacy in the age of Surveillance & Data mining

No longer just a face in the crowd.

With increasing surveillance & artificial intelligence at work, none of us can hope to be just a face in the crowd. Everyone has a profile & can be tracked. And with the increasing use of smart phones, and the desire to be networked & inter-connected 24x7, privacy is fast becoming a redundant word.

Installation of every mobile app asks for a bunch of permissions as a pre-requisite to install. The average user does not think much of granting the permissions in the excitement & anxiety to use the application.

The downloaded application may of course prove useful to the user but at what cost?
What are we giving up in return?

Our privacy of course!

Take the instance of the app 'Truecaller'

Check out the following article in www.ehow.com posted by Waseem Ashraf in February 2016. Please note that the article has been suitably edited by me. I have provided the link to the original article as well at the end of this topic.

Truecaller is a privacy risk - how it works is what you might not like.

Truecaller is a great application/service. it can tell tell the name and any other available information of the phone number even if you have not saved that information in your contact list. But here is a thing, from where do you think Truecaller is getting all that information???

Image source

They are getting that information from all of you, users who are using the Truecaller service. By using the app you are giving away your & everyone else's information - stored on your device - to the company , which then uses the information to show names and addresses to others who search for some phone number or name. Do you think this fair with others? You are giving away their information without even asking them.

You might want to know how Truecaller actually works?
When you install Truecaller application on your phone, it simply uploads each and every contact and information linked to it from your phone's contact list to its servers. When someone searches for the mobile number or a specific name, Truecaller uses the number and the information uploaded from your phone to show results for that search. Actually it is using all the data uploaded from all around the world by the people like you and me to show information of some specific number.

If you want to search for any contact from Truecaller's web interface you'll need to sign in using either Facebook, Yahoo, Google or Microsoft accounts. Almost every person has shared his/her phone number on social profiles. If you sign in with any of your social profile, Truecaller could access your and the numbers of your friends who have that visible for you. So, that can be the reason for the requirement to sign in with social accounts.

What do you think will happen if anyone with malafide intenions gets access to information stored on Truecaller's database?
It is a fact that Truecaller was hacked by the group named as Syrian electronic army. They were able to steal 7 databases which had access tokens of millions of facebook, twiter, linkedin and gmail accounts. Using which they could post on the profiles of users and access information the wanted without them noticing it. Size of the database they stole was 564 GB.

Note : This happened during 2013. The size of the stolen data is variously reported as 450 GB as against 564 GB in the above article. For more on this check (http://www.ehackingnews.com/2013/07/truecaller-database-hacked-by-syrian.html).

The best way to be safe online and keep your information private is by not sharing too much about yourself on any online service. Mobile phone number is the most private information these days. And you don't want to share that with the whole world.

Can I remove my number from Truecaller if it is listed there?

Yes, if you have your number listed on Truecaller, you can simply un-list it.
Information courtesy - Waseem Ashraf on www.ehow.com

Well, that was the write-up by Waseem. Now the point is that even if I don't have the app on my phone, if a friend of mine has saved my mobile number with all my information - name, photograph, email id etc., this data automatically gets uploaded to the Truecaller database & is available to anybody in the world who can search by using my mobile number or name on the Truecaller website.

I would strongly urge all our community members who are concerned about the privacy of their mobile number to visit this link un-list & have their number unlisted from the site - in case it is listed there.

You can also check this Youtube video for more clarity on the issue.

Video source: Youtube/Channel Gadgets 360

Should we be concerned about Facial recognition algorithms?

Grigory Bakunov, a top specialist at one of Russia's largest tech companies, has invented an anti-facial recognition algorithm to conceal people's identities with the help of makeup.

Facial recognition software is a reality and an increasingly irritating one. Smart cameras are monitoring the streets of most major cities, social media have massive databases of users' faces, and god knows how security services are planning to use it. Is there any way to escape Big Brother and enjoy some privacy?

Grigory Bakunov, director of technology distribution at Yandex, Russia’s tech giant, decided he had enough. “Facial recognition systems are used by different people for various purposes, and it’s impossible to move around Moscow avoiding cameras,” he wrote on Telegram.

So, he took some time from his day job to develop an algorithm that prevents facial recognition software from successfully identifying a person. His service offers special makeup to hide people's identity from artificial intelligence.

The service was able to offer futuristic makeup that could trick smart cameras with just a few facial lines.

Image & information source

“An easy but effective algorithm was developed very fast,” Bakunov wrote. "The service was able to offer futuristic makeup that could trick smart cameras with just a few facial lines."

The project proved short lived, however, because Bakunov realized that it would now be possible to deceive banks and police.

“That’s why we decided we shouldn’t launch it on the market; the chance that someone might use it for nefarious purposes was too high,” Bakunov said.

It is unfortunate that the algorithm developed by Bakunov cannot be made available to everyone as the risk of misuse by people with criminal intent is huge.

A pertinent question rises in my mind. Is Technology a blessing or a curse?

Well, I guess as with all useful gadgets, the purpose of technology is to serve but it can be used as well as mis-used. The same technology also helps in fighting crime.

It can serve as well as destroy depending on the intent of the user.

We live in the age of data-mining & surveillance. And I realize that I am no longer just a face in the crowd.

Thanks for reading! Hope you find the information useful.

May I also invite you to check my other posts :
https://steemit.com/ego/@cryptopal/ego-vs-earth
https://steemit.com/money/@cryptopal/man-money-and-god