Russian social media users use facial recognition app to dox and harass porn stars

A CONTROVERSIAL facial recognition app in Russia has demonstrated the dangers of sharing our personal information in the social media age.

FindFace uses facial recognition to find people on a popular social media site in Russia.

A CONTROVERSIAL facial recognition app has been used by Russian internet users to identify porn stars and harass them and their families.

The app called FindFace works by using a photo of an individual and scouring a Russian social network site similar to Facebook called VK.com to make a match. Anyone with a decent picture of their target can likely find the identity and their subsequent personal information which has understandably raised a number of concerns over privacy.

The first 30 searches are free and then users must pay.

I didn't believe that but Jesus, findface actually WORKS. I just found the profiles by uploading some photos of the people I chatted with.

— Movey (@MoveyFM) April 16, 2016

In February this year, the app became widely known after St. Petersburg man Andrei Mima published a post on the VK.com site in which he wrote about how he managed to track down two women who he had previously photographed but had been unable to give them the photo at the time.

This month photographer Egor Tsvetkov used a similar style photo project to demonstrate the risks of the facial recognition app and highlight the vast swathes of information we readily make public in the age of social media.

The photographer took pictures of strangers on public transport and later found their personal information by using the FindFace app.

Shortly after local media picked up the story about Mr Tsvetkov’s project, users of website Dvach (similar to image-based bulletin board 4chan) began using the technique to dox porn stars and harass them and their families.

The online sleuths also targeted women on prostitution websites to publicly oust them.

In one exchange captured and translated by Global Voices, a Dvach user asks someone who they believe to be a friend of a porn actress if they knew she took pornographic photos.

“Are you aware she does porn?” they ask.

“And why are you telling everyone about it?”

“That’s a funny reaction. You think it’s OK for a person to do porn?”

“It’s none of my business and who exactly are you?”

Following a fruitless exchange the person grows angry.

“Look I don’t care. And you’re f***ed if we ever meet,” they respond to the troll.

Those conducting the behaviour online reportedly claimed they did so out of a “moral outrage” against pornographic material.

While the FindFace service is limited to the Russian social media site it highlights the ease in which such technology can be used to track down strangers, when publicly available.

In an interview with TJournal the founder of the service, Maxim Perlin, said there was nothing the company could do to prevent women from getting harassed in such a fashion but said the company was “making every effort to protect all Vkontakte users from potential malicious acts”.