Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Used for Instant Doxxing with AI and Facial Recognition
Harvard students connect Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses to a facial recognition system, resulting in I-XRAY, a tool for instant doxxing in public. The system successfully retrieves personal information such as phone numbers, addresses, and social security numbers, which raises serious privacy concerns. To protect privacy, consider removing oneself from facial recognition databases, people search engines, and implementing two-factor authentication for sensitive accounts.
This system can swiftly identify strangers in public, retrieve their personal information, and even be used to approach them and build trust. AnhPhu Nguyen explained, “We stream the video from the glasses straight to Instagram and have a computer program monitor the stream. We use AI to detect when we’re looking at someone’s face, then we scour the internet to find more pictures of that person.”
During live tests, the students showed off the system's capabilities by obtaining phone numbers, addresses, and even social security numbers. They went on to say that they use data sources such as online articles and voter registration databases to collect information such as names, phone numbers, home addresses, and relatives' names. This information is then sent to an app on their phones for future reference.
Using the glasses, the students were able to identify numerous people, including fellow Harvard students, without their knowledge. If misused, this technology has the potential to lead to dangerous or compromised situations. For example, by using the gathered information to engage people in conversation, scammers can easily gain trust by appearing to know personal information that strangers would not normally have.
The students discussed how they successfully persuaded people of their familiarity by mentioning specific details about them. For example, they approached a woman from the Cambridge Community Foundation, claiming to have met her there, and correctly identified a girl's home address in Atlanta as well as her parents' names. The ease with which this information was obtained raises issues of privacy and security.
This system requires readily available technology, such as Meta Ray-Ban 2 smart glasses, Pimeyes facial recognition search engine, LLM data-extraction models, FastPeopleSearch for home address look-ups, and Cloaked.com for social security number look-ups. Although this is a demonstration of the system's capabilities, the potential for abuse is clear.
The students who created the project were aware of the significant privacy concerns it raised. They emphasised that the goal of developing this tool was not for misuse, and they have no plans to release it to the public. However, the implications of such technology for privacy in public spaces are significant, raising concerns about society's willingness to accept such exposure of personal data.
In response to the I-XRAY project's privacy implications, the students proposed some risk mitigation measures:
Remove yourself from facial recognition databases such as Pimeyes and Facecheck ID.
Remove your presence from people search engines like FastPeopleSearch and CheckThem.
Implement two-factor authentication for sensitive accounts to improve security.
While these precautions may provide some protection against individuals such as the Harvard students who developed this technology, there is still concern about the potential misuse of such powerful tools by larger entities with vested interests in accessing vast amounts of personal data in public settings.
Harvard students connect Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses to facial recognition system, creating a tool named I-XRAY for instant doxxing in public.
The system successfully retrieves personal information like phone numbers, addresses, and social security numbers, raising significant privacy concerns.
Suggestions to protect privacy include removing oneself from facial recognition databases, people search engines, and implementing two-factor authentication for sensitive accounts.
Source: FORBES