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Social media users have juggled the benefits of social connection with the incremental loss of privacy since the first online social network became available. Now, according to a study performed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the battle for privacy may have reached a whole new level. The study used commercially available facial recognition technology to identify photos of strangers and then predict their social security numbers. And it was right a startling percentage of the time.

Alessandro Acquisti, who headed up the research project, said the study was conducted in three experiments. The first experiment applied face recognition technology to photos obtained from searchable profiles on Facebook to identify anonymous profiles from an online dating site.

Next, the team used a cheap webcam to take pictures of CMU student participants and used the facial recognition technology to link those photos to Facebook profiles of the students. In the final experiment, researchers used data obtained from Facebook about the student volunteers in experiment number two to predict the social security numbers of those students.

Using the students’ date of birth and hometown (both publicly available on Facebook if privacy settings haven’t been adjusted), the research team applied an algorithm that enabled them to accurately predict a social security number for many of the participants.
While a lot of factors would need to come together before identity thieves could get your social security number from your Facebook photos, the fact remains that in the wrong hands, this technology could open some frightening possibilities. Even the researchers involved in the Carnegie Mellon study were surprised at how accurate the results could be. For average people online, this study and similar uses of the technology may soon force some serious conversations about the meaning of privacy. For instance, Facebook already uses facial recognition to enable automatic photo tagging of your friends. And while Google has so far put the kibosh on using such measures to identify strangers via image searches, it’s only a matter of time before technology savvy people figure out how to do it anyway.
For now, the question seems to be whether it will be possible in the future to maintain a social presence online and still retain a measure of privacy. And unless the flaw that allows social security numbers to be deduced based on your hometown and date of birth gets resolved quickly, it may be time to start worrying about how to prevent identity theft based on Facebook photos and profiles.

Article Written by Lynetta Bowen