back to article Facebook's send-us-your-nudes service is coming to UK, America

Facebook has begun conducting a pilot where it solicits intimate photographs of women – and it will soon offer the service in the United Kingdom as well as the US. Anxious exes who fear their former partner is set on revenge porn will be urged to upload photographs of themselves nude. A hash of the nude image is created and …

  1. John Robson Silver badge

    Why...

    Don't they provide a hashing program and ask for hashes of pictures you don't want published...

    1. TonyJ

      Re: Why...

      That was my first thought too.

      But then I suppose you get into the issue of what is to stop someone hashing photographs of other people? Or of legitimate adult performers, or even non-humans?

      1. Ben Tasker

        Re: Why...

        If they're saying it's completely automated then they carry the same risk even when you upload for hashing (could you, for instance, upload a bunch of Trump images?).

        There'll be hell to pay, though, if they fuck this up and it turns out to be leaky

      2. TRT Silver badge

        Re: Why...

        Is there a job going then, where these images are vetted by a human for inclusion in the barring scheme?

        1. chivo243 Silver badge
          Paris Hilton

          Re: Why...

          @TRT

          Not enough mind bleach in the universe to take this job. Sure, there are gorgeous nude pics out there, but I have to think there is a much larger percentage of photos nobody should see..

          Paris because...

          1. TRT Silver badge

            Re: Why...

            @chivo243

            Fortunately, my memory is starting to go. Or at least that's what I tell people. ;)

        2. Mark 85
          Coat

          Re: Why...

          Is there a job going then, where these images are vetted by a human for inclusion in the barring scheme?

          Might be... I wonder how many applicants they'll have. Will FB pay the vetters or will they have to pay FB for the privilege much like the old Woody Allen movie?

          Icon... I'm checking my pockets for change just in case.

      3. vteague

        Re: Why...

        That's no excuse. They could easily do that check at the point they find a clash. The whole point of this nonsense is that they're supposed to be detecting when another matching image is uploaded in the clear.

        Either way, you can try uploading someone else's photo and, either way, at the point they're considering removing it they'll be able to see it. The difference is that if you hash it yourself on your own machine, they can't see it if nobody uploads it in the clear.

        I cannot believe that this protocol is being seriously suggested as a way of protecting people's privacy.

      4. Adrian Midgley 1

        Re: Why...

        It would be challenged, when there was a match.

        Not a failure mode.

    2. Andy 73 Silver badge

      Re: Why...

      Because then it's easy to automate a program that takes your revenge porn and makes tiny changes so that it's not recognised by the magic algorithm, but still shows all of your unmentionables.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why...

      because facebook pass pictures to the news people when asked and nude pictures are worth more.

    4. Anonymous Noel Coward
      Boffin

      Re: Why...

      Doubt that would work, since you could just change one pixel and the hash would change. Meaning you could have 2,000 separate hashes for the same image.

      For example, services that flag child pornography when it's uploaded use a special software (PhotoDNA) which converts the image to grayscale, then breaks it down into a grid and calculates a number per grid until they wind up with something like 1000,481,0,0,251..., meaning that modifying the image is pointless.

      People would be better off getting the numerical sum of their nudes with that.

      But the problem with that is, regular people aren't allowed access to that software unless they're a LEA or popular service like Facebook. (Which sucks, as I have a large anime artwork collection I'd love to sort through far more easily to remove duplicates.)

      1. Midnight

        Re: Why...

        But the problem with that is, regular people aren't allowed access to that software unless they're a LEA or popular service like Facebook. (Which sucks, as I have a large anime artwork collection I'd love to sort through far more easily to remove duplicates.)

        https://github.com/opennota/findimagedupes

        You're welcome.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why...

      Do they need any volunteers to check the quality of the uploads?

    6. J. R. Hartley

      Re: Why...

      Are Facebook hiring? They're not a bad company after all.

    7. Suricou Raven

      Re: Why...

      It would pose difficulties if they wished to switch to a better hashing algorithm later on. Also, a perceptual hash would lead to a *huge* number of false positives on its own - they probably want the full image on file for verification.

      1. Aqua Marina

        Re: Why...

        Pics!

        Or it didn’t happen!

    8. macjules

      Re: Why...

      So let's get this clear. One of the world's largest marketing concerns wants everyone to upload naked pictures of themselves in order to help prevent revenge porn? What is the ratio between the number of sex pests versus the expected actual image upload?

      This reeks to me of "You are all just sheep who will do exactly what we tell you to do, now shut up and upload your naked selfie"

  2. Warm Braw

    What could possibly go wrong?

    Fortunately, no-one would want to be exposed to my back-end infrastructure.

    1. adnim
      Joke

      Re: What could possibly go wrong?

      Mmm, I'm a front end developer.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What could possibly go wrong?

      Fortunately, no-one would want to be exposed to my back-end infrastructure.

      From what little I've seen, there's no (back) end to the segmented interests of the web. There's probably armies of people who'd want to take a gander at your back passage, or mine. Now there's a thought for those supping on warm cocoa.

      Out of shame rather than modesty, I won't be sharing pictures of my bits with Facebook: the list of less trustworthy organisations is about one long. Not to mention that I don't have an FB account. For those who do have an FB account, make sure Zuck uploads pics of his own nether regions first.

      1. Muscleguy

        Re: What could possibly go wrong?

        Oh indeed, there are people who want nothing more than pictures of your naked feet. Who don't want to see the whole breast, just cleavage in closeup.

        Pron really does cater for the niche groups. Back before all this there were peeping Toms. Now there is no need.

  3. TRT Silver badge

    "This lets the victim take control and be proactive in their own safety,"

    Is this some sort of perverted version of blaming the victim?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "This lets the victim take control and be proactive in their own safety,"

      Sounds like it.

      The solution is simple, never take photos of yourself nude and never let your "friend" take pictures of you nude...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "This lets the victim take control and be proactive in their own safety,"

        "The solution is simple, never take photos of yourself nude and never let your "friend" take pictures of you nude."

        ...and women shouldn't wear ripped jeans, or walk alone after dark. Better still put them in a burka - even when having a bath. See where such apparently self-imposed restrictions lead?

        There's nothing wrong with the sight of the naked human body - except in the minds of those who have been conditioned to be disturbed by their own "dark" thoughts. The blackmailers - for that is what they are - are handed their weapon by society's likely condemnation of their victim.

        1. TRT Silver badge

          Re: "society's likely condemnation of their victim"

          Whilst this might be true, it really is up to me what I want done with images of me, isn't it? And if I want to wear a burka, why not? I don't think it's a question of societal condemnation - I mean, there's lot of society that condemns wearing a burka, right? But I'm not bothered if someone posts a picture of me doing that online - revenge ultraconservatism. Right on!

        2. Mage Silver badge

          Re: "...and women shouldn't wear ripped jeans, or walk alone after dark.

          Absolutely STUPID comparison.

          "There's nothing wrong with the sight of the naked human body".

          However if you don't want YOUR naked body online, don't give anyone a copy and don't store it in the cloud etc. You'd not parade naked on your front lawn? Or sit in the window naked?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "...and women shouldn't wear ripped jeans, or walk alone after dark.

            "You'd not parade naked on your front lawn? "

            It is not illegal in England & Wales jurisdictions. Any police action against a naturist is usually deemed "Public Order". You are apparently responsible if a neighbour threatens you with violence because of their own "dirty" thoughts.

            The ripped jeans etc are examples where how women behave perfectly normally is deemed by some to be "asking for it". See example in Egypt recently.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: "...and women shouldn't wear ripped jeans, or walk alone after dark.

              I share the opinion that there's nothing innately shameful about the naked human body. Unfortunately a significant proportion of the populace think otherwise, and our legal system often tends towards the puritanical. If you have a naked picture leaked onto the internet you get to choose whether to brazen it out, or to accept the shaming that other members of society will inevitably try to fling your way - those are pretty much the only options.

              Advising people not to allow naked pictures to be taken of them therefore isn't victim blaming, it's just good advice. The reality is that once there is a picture of you naked it's very easy to lose control over where that image ends up (whether that's by a "friend" leaking the image online, or a hacker exfiltrating the images). If you're OK taking that risk then go ahead - as long as you're an adult making an informed choice about it.

              1. big_D Silver badge

                Re: "...and women shouldn't wear ripped jeans, or walk alone after dark.

                There isn't anything wrong with the naked human form. But I don't want pictures of my naked body circulating on the Internet, so I don't let anyone photograph me naked and I don't take any photos myself.

                If other people want to make photos/films of themselves naked or having sex, that is their business, but it should be clear to them upfront, that those images might end up on the Internet. If they don't want those images plastered all over the 'Net for the rest of eternity, they should think twice before letting those photos/films be made...

                Peephole cameras is something else, but you probably don't have them to upload to Faceplant in the first place. And, as others have said, hashing locally and uploading just the hash makes a lot more sense, although it will deprive the pervs at Faceplant of their jollies.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "...and women shouldn't wear ripped jeans, or walk alone after dark.

            > You'd not parade naked on your front lawn? Or sit in the window naked?

            I see you are not my neighbour.

      2. Mage Silver badge

        Re: never take photos of yourself nude and never let your "friend" take pictures of you nude..

        Can't upvote enough.

        The FB solution is stupid and will leak!

    2. rmason

      Re: "This lets the victim take control and be proactive in their own safety,"

      @TRT

      I came to say something similar.

      Until the person (male or female) has had those naked photos displayed/shown to people/uploaded without their consent, they are not a "victim" of anything.

      They are a person of whom a naked photograph exists. not a victim of anything at all.

      While i'm 100% against such things, the language used here is odd. You can't preemptively "be a victim". You're not a victim unless the naughty photos (which are normally taken WITH consent) are then shared minus the consent.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'you're a menace to society'

    Send the photo hashed surely.... It can be verified using other means. But sending it to Facebook naked, WTF!.... Is it 'Black Mirror' time already???

  5. lglethal Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Dear Lord, the number of ways this could go wrong...

    - Spoofed sites --> so people end up uploading there nude shots to a non-Facebook site

    - Man in the middle attacks --> Pics get snaffled on the way to Facebook

    - Hacks of Facebook --> Pics get grabbed at Facebook ("they dont store the pics" - my a$$ they dont! Who has ever heard of the Facebooks and Googles of the world EVER deleting ANYTHING!)

    - misconfigured settings making the Pictures freely available --> Because that NEVER happens... *rolleyes*

    Bugger me, this has so many Avenues for failure...

  6. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Only someone as disfunctional as Zuk could have come up with this

    This is wrong on so many levels - technical, human, legal and god knows what else.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Black Helicopters

      Re: Only someone as disfunctional as Zuk could have come up with this

      You know what will happen next...

      This only works for Facebook. The photo will have to be shared across across a common nude photo platform and made available to other social networks.

      1. Pete 2 Silver badge

        Re: Only someone as disfunctional as Zuk could have come up with this

        > The photo will have to be shared across across a common nude photo platform and made available to other social networks.

        Are you suggested there should be a network standard for this?

        The Common Naked Photo Interchange Protocol

        1. MattPi

          Re: Only someone as disfunctional as Zuk could have come up with this

          The Common Naked Photo Interchange Protocol

          You can do better than that!

          Network Interchange Protocol Subverting Lewd Ill-will Photography.

        2. alain williams Silver badge

          Re: Only someone as disfunctional as Zuk could have come up with this

          The Common Naked Photo Interchange Protocol

          Is that a point-to-point or a broadcast protocol ?

          1. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Only someone as disfunctional as Zuk could have come up with this

            "Is that a point-to-point or a broadcast protocol ?"

            It's an FTP protocol since everything in "The cloud" is potentially public and the repository will be hacked at some point.

  7. Daedalus
    Facepalm

    Deja vu

    Reminds me of the time a museum - it might have been the Kensington Science Museum itself - set up an exhibit where people could type messages into a computer and have them displayed. Very new fangled stuff in those distant days. Somebody decided to compile a list of NSFW words so the computer could spot them and blank them out on the display. Then some bright spark - who is probably a tech billionaire by now - found the file and displayed its contents for all to see.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "they're not storing the image"

    Sure, like you don't store everything f*cking else.

    1. rmason

      "They're not storing the images" = We have asked our (overwhelmingly male i'd imagine) staff not to store these images. Please.

      They all said they promise.

    2. Teiwaz

      "they're not storing the image"

      Sure, like you don't store everything f*cking else.

      Even if they actually don't (even by 'process failure'), you could be fairly sure some gov agency will be

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And how does this square with the "Trans" thing of late ?

    Just asking ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And how does this square with the "Trans" thing of late ?

      As soon as I saw that comment, I knew a few bots would hit it.

      "Trans" is another destabilising fad being pushed into the west at the moment.

      COME ON BOTS: DO YOUR WORST.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: And how does this square with the "Trans" thing of late ?

        As a trans bot, I am destabilising no one.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        The Decepticon that wanted to be an Autobot

        "COME ON BOTS: DO YOUR WORST."

        Indeed, those Trans-Formers are robots in disguise.

  10. fishman

    Worthless?

    Whenever I upload a picture, I first crop and resize it. At that point what good is a hash of the original image?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Worthless?

      Let's not get technical about this and point out the obvious.

      Edit: Sorry I need to add sarcasm due to past mistakes.

      Water is wet, cheese is yellow, Donald Trump is a really nice fellow, he talks he tweets but really he just talks sheet.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      Re: Worthless?

      I have to crop my nudes, just saying.

      Mines the dirty one with hole in the pockets

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Worthless?

      This is why it should use something like PhotoDNA, which is resistant to minor image alterations such as cropping, brightness/contrast adjustment, etc.

    4. Ben Tasker

      Re: Worthless?

      It's not a simple filehash.

      We've had TinEye - capable of taking an input image and finding cropped variations across the net - for years and years. It's developed in the meantime, but this is far from new technology.

      The hashing is based (AIUI) on the variation between pixels in "key" locations (of which there are more than a few), so cropping the image won't help. Even contrast tweaks have to be fairly extreme to throw it off.

      All that said, it's far from perfect.

    5. dnicholas

      Re: But Angela has a working brain...

      The vast, vast majority of internet users don't read the reg. These mouth breathing, tracksuit wearing slobs access the internet almost exclusively via their credit bought iPads and iPhones and have zero clue about image editing that isn't Instagram filters. I imagine this hashing of images is amazingly effective on Facebook's platforms.

      /elitism

    6. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Worthless?

      "Whenever I upload a picture, I first crop and resize it. At that point what good is a hash of the original image?"

      I searched on an image the other day on Google and it not only returned the one I gave it, but also the same photo flipped horizontally and another one that was cropped. Recognition software is getting better all of the time.

  11. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      Yes

      And it made Edwin Land a fortune.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How Prevalent is Nude Photography....

      Google it out of work and you will find quite few hits.

    3. Robin Bradshaw

      Re: How Prevalent is Nude Photography....

      Shadmeister, do you think polaroid were such a big company and made so much money because of the quality of the pictures they produced? Theres a reason digital cameras killed them :P

    4. rmason

      Re: How Prevalent is Nude Photography....

      "Or is this a lowering of standards, in correlation with the rise in stupidity, that causes nude photographs to become the norm, and now a problem ?

      Regards,

      Shadmeister."

      Shad,

      It's practically ubiquitous these days. Absolutely the norm with those of certain ages.

      Hence the requirement for such a law in the first place ("revenge porn" is an actual thing you can be charged with) and hence FB thinking it needs to do something like this.

      Schools have major issues with it, and beyond that age it's an overwhelming majority.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How Prevalent is Nude Photography....

        "Schools have major issues with it, and beyond that age it's an overwhelming majority."

        That under-age demographic is considered criminal in the eyes of the law for taking/having such pictures - even as selfies. Pre-emptively telling Facebook they have such things seems counter-productive - especially if Facebook are then obliged to inform the police.

    5. Martin Gregorie

      Re: How Prevalent is Nude Photography....

      It used to happen, but amateur nude photography was a minority hobby, at least among those without their own darkroom.

      When I was a student, one year I had a summer vacation job in the Kodak (NZ) slide mounting room. Since it was illegal to send nude pics through the post, Kodak had to pull any boxes of slides containing them and forward the box to the snapper's local cop shop for collection.

      This meant that those running the slide mounting machines were expected to spot any such photos and check them in a slide projector. Cue a yell of 'Got one!' and a general stampede in the direction of the projector and screen when anything was found.

      However during that summer break (6 or 8 weeks - I forget which) I only remember that happening two or three times on my shift.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: How Prevalent is Nude Photography....

      > Serious question - how prevalent is the taking nude pictures of oneself, or the other half ?.

      I'm pretty sure the second ever Daguerreotype was a nude, the first being a test shot for the lighting.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How Prevalent is Nude Photography....

        "I'm pretty sure the second ever Daguerreotype was a nude, the first being a test shot for the lighting."

        Go back further. Clerics in the church in Italy commissioned paintings of nudes for their private apartments - usually kept behind curtain drapes. Early sculptures were nudes. It was the Christian cultures who retrospectively added figurative fig leaves to classical sculptures - or even broke off the bits that offended*** them.

        ***turned them on

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: How Prevalent is Nude Photography....

            Thanks for the replies. Your private parts were called exactly that, because they are private.

            Yes, but if people want to share them/images with selected people, they should be able to. This idea that willies or tits are somehow evil, and need to be kept hidden is f***ing Victorian, and the sort of judgemental crap-headedness that would fit right into certain bearded societies.

            Nudity will please some people, and appal others. But the naked body isn't anything that should by rights HAVE to be hidden.

            1. This post has been deleted by its author

            2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

              Re: How Prevalent is Nude Photography....

              "Cover up those table legs, mother, they're inflaming my sexual ardour."

    7. This post has been deleted by its author

  12. Alastair Dodd 1

    Dumb

    Better idea, if you report an image has been shared why don't they hash that and warn the scum sharing it that they have broken the rules.

    I dunno actually policing their platform might be an idea... considering the amount of data they PUBLISH.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dumb

      "and warn the scum sharing it that they have broken the rules."

      Or tell the Police.

    2. FrogsAndChips Silver badge

      Re: Dumb

      That's already in place, as mentioned in the article and reported here back in April:

      https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/06/facebooks_going_to_block_revenge_smut_with_ai_or_humans_or_both/

    3. d3vy

      Re: Dumb

      "Better idea, if you report an image has been shared why don't they hash that and warn the scum sharing it that they have broken the rules."

      "That has been shared".. past tense.

      Surely you see the issue?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "they're not storing the image"

    *wipes away the tears of laughter* Seriously!?

    I can't imagine Facebook messing that one up, they have such a brilliant track record, and of course never suddenly change their terms and conditions at all(!)

    Whatever happened to NOT allowing people to snap nudes of you?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "they're not storing the image"

      "Whatever happened to NOT allowing people to snap nudes of you?"

      Now you went and applied common sense to the situation...

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The only way this will be resolved is if they become responsible for the content published like newspapers and all other media are.

  15. Pen-y-gors

    Another wee problemette...

    Assume person A and person B are an item and person B takes a nudie photo of person A with the consent (or otherwise) of person A. Now, if A and |B split up and person B is crass enough to want to spam the web with said photo of A, how does A upload a photo of themselves, (which exists only on B's phone) for Zuk to drool over?

    And what if they have a whole portfolio of piccies?

    This one ain't going to fly, is it?

    1. Pete 2 Silver badge

      Re: Another wee problemette...

      > how does A upload a photo of themselves, (which exists only on B's phone) for Zuk to drool over?

      And how does anyone who wishes to have a photo "hashed" prove that they are the person in the photo.

      Would you have to send a copy of your passport - and hope Google doesn't hash that one by mistake.

    2. rmason

      Re: Another wee problemette...

      shame I can only upvote once.

      This, this this.

      If I have a naked photo of my wife, and we become "no longer married" and decide to use it in such a way, who has that photo?

      Me of course, it's on my phone, isn't it!

      1. d3vy

        Re: Another wee problemette...

        Again, a little common sense goes a long way.

        Of course in the situation you describe it doesn't help..

        But in other scenarios it does, so for example if a partner sends me a picture of their bits and we later split up I cannot then upload that picture.

        Given that it's fairly common to exchange nudes nowadays it's certainly useful.

      2. strum

        Re: Another wee problemette...

        >If I have a naked photo of my wife, and we become "no longer married" and decide to use it in such a way, who has that photo?

        If you upload it to t'internet and she sees it there, she now has a copy of it, to send to Zuck.

    3. F Seiler

      Re: Another wee problemette...

      FB could only use the uploaded nude as an authorization token (face-checked against existing tagged photos or some such) to block all nudes tagged with your profile name on other profiles. After the outcry, version 2 would then give you the opportunity to allow select profiles to post nudes of you again.

  16. This post has been deleted by its author

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anyone used Googles "image matching" ?

    just saying ?

    1. Mage Silver badge

      Re: Anyone used Googles "image matching" ?

      I have.

      It has a huge number of false matches, but does most times allow me to manually find the artist of a well known cropped painting. Amazing though how often the sites higher in ranking have wrong attribution of artist or that Google offers matches that are not remotely similar.

      It can be very poor on logos, which is odd.

      It's rubbish if the image isn't on many web sites.

  18. Dave 32
    Pint

    Hash?

    So, the sender edits the image, and tweaks the value of one pixel off in the corner, and now the hash is completely different, which completely defeats the system. That's how hashes work. This has to be one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard of. Oh, wait, maybe not the dumbest, if some guy is wanting a bunch of nudes sent to him.

    Dave

    1. Martin an gof Silver badge

      Re: Hash?

      Or maybe (as others are suggesting), "hash" is just sloppy shorthand for what would actually be some kind of image recognition function? I gather Google has quite a good implementation?

      That said, I've never really played with image recognition myself until recently. I have been trying it out using digiKam against my home photos. Not impressed so far - it has quite a lot of false positives just when trying to recognise what constitutes a "face" (even when I turn the "accuracy" right up), and one of the first tests I gave it - some shots of a railway station taken from the bridge, please find similar photos - it failed spectacularly, completely missing even near-identical shots in the same folder.

      Anybody have any hints?

      M.

    2. Rimpel

      Re: Hash?

      It's not just a hash of the file. According to the article in ahem the guardian which has significantly more information than this article, it does use Photo DNA whose ' “hash” matching technology made it possible to identify known illegal images even if someone had altered them'

      At least soon facebook will have all of the 'necessary hashtags'.

    3. Flakk

      Re: Hash?

      So, the sender edits the image, and tweaks the value of one pixel off in the corner, and now the hash is completely different, which completely defeats the system.

      To satisfy my curiosity, I succeeded in changing the hash value of an image I downloaded from a website merely by opening and then saving it with an image editor. I didn't have to modify any pixels at all.

      This whole proposition seems like a bizarre social experiment dreamed up by Facebook's BOFH to determine the depth of the userbase's "Peak Stupidity".

      1. Ben Tasker

        Re: Hash?

        To satisfy my curiosity, I succeeded in changing the hash value of an image I downloaded from a website merely by opening and then saving it with an image editor. I didn't have to modify any pixels at all.

        That won't affect the software they're using.

        If you're patient enough to try it, get the original indexed by TinEye.

        Then reverse search your "modified" one. Then crop it and try again, then change some pixels and try again.

        You will most likely find that TinEye correctly returns the original every time. When they say hashing, they don't mean filehashes.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can I get a job?

    Most wanted job on the web - receiver of naughty pics at Facebook!

    1. Swarthy
      Joke

      Re: Can I get a job?

      "It's $100 a week."

      "Isn't that a bit low?"

      "Yeah, but it's all I could afford."

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Uploading another person's intimate pictures seems not unknown amongst teenagers - either out of spite or stupidity. Are all the teenagers going to pre-emptively have their own pictures hashed - just in case they "escape" though someone else?

    Would that make Facebook guilty of handling such apparently under-age pictures? Would Facebook report the owner to the police? Apparently such digital selfies are still illegal - especially if transferred over a network.

  21. Adrian 4
    Holmes

    Watermarking

    Maybe You could get a barcode printed on your skin. Then FB could just reject anything with that barcode.

  22. Peter Galbavy
    FAIL

    Now upload non smut trademarked stuff etc...

    Erm, what stops someone uploading pics (or rather hashes of pics) of famous landmarks, London buses, brand like coke cans?

    I see nothing that could go wrong. Nope.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Now upload non smut trademarked stuff etc...

      Clearly a case of fake-nudes

    2. d3vy

      Re: Now upload non smut trademarked stuff etc...

      "Erm, what stops someone uploading pics (or rather hashes of pics) of famous landmarks, London buses, brand like coke cans?"

      Technology mostly.

  23. mark l 2 Silver badge

    This will surely only work if the person in the photos has a copy of the photos to upload to create the hashes and that the posting the 'revenge porn' does not alter images in any way.

    Even sophisticated filtering software can be by passed by rotating the image through a few degrees, altering the contrast/brightness or cropping then adding a patterned border etc.

    This sounds more like a PR campaign than something that is really going to stop a person determined to cause someone distress by upload images.

  24. Harry Stottle

    Photo DNA cannot be as reliable as they boast

    It's an educated guess, because I don't claim inside knowledge.

    But I reach that conclusion on the basis that they're not making it freely available for home use. To be fair, it doesn't look like Microsoft have anything but honorable motives on this occasion (although I would question their own security - if the FBI comes calling are they in a position NOT to release such images?) (one of the many questions Facebook will also have to answer)

    They make the software available in various cloud offerings and have donated it to a Missing Child charity amongst others. So why aren't they simply allowing us all to download a copy and do our own hashing and upload the results instead of the image - as suggested in the first post on this thread (John Robson)

    I can think of only two possible explanations. First is that the process is so power hungry, you'd need a Bitcoin mining rig to run it. That doesn't look feasible from what I've read about the process. Looks like it might take about as long as creating a couple of thousand hashes. Under a second on most desktops.

    The second is that they don't want it in our sticky little hands because it would relatively trivial to find ways to modify target images in such a way that they wouldn't be detected, so to preserve the value of the service, they don't want the great unwashed to access it.

    In short, they're relying on "Security Through Obscurity" and, like most such attempts, that'll work for a few months, until the obscurity is cracked...

    Oh, and by the way, the (partial )solution to sharing intimate private images is sharing one time keys which BOTH/ALL parties have to re-combine to access the images/data (as outlined in Digital Telepathy)

  25. herman

    Pics, or it is fake news.

  26. adam payne

    But you'd need to trust Facebook a great deal to think that's part of a solution

    I go with not taking nudes of myself and forwarding them to people.

  27. Milton

    Limited use case?

    So if you happen to have access to photo(s) of you, which you believe are also in the possession of an ex/other (why would *you* have copies?), and if there are few enough of them to make this upload practical, and if Facebook doesn't set too low a limit on the uploaded quantity for any one customer, and if you trust Facebook to permanently delete the copies you send, and if you're willing to have total strangers in the form of FB employees vetting what you send (because it simply *cannot* be a fully automated process, for reasons that surely don't need to be belaboured), and if legalistics don't require FB to be able to retrieve all images anyway (think: kiddie porn), and if you trust the security and integrity of ANY internet company (cue hysterical laughter), then it's likely that if your ex does try to mischievously upload embarrassing photos to FB—they won't be able to.

    Except of course, such photos probably violate FB's ToS anyway, so the miscreants will have uploaded them somewhere else where that entire fraught, unreliable and not to be trusted process wouldn't help in the slightest. Because, lest we forget, Facebook is not the internet. It's just the shallow end.¹

    ¹ Though not, admittedly, as shallow as Twitter, the definitive paddling pool for 'tards.

    1. d3vy

      Re: Limited use case?

      "why would *you* have copies"

      This may come as a surprise you you but people take pictures of themselves and send them to their partners...

  28. RareToy

    What about MIT's pixel adding routine that misleads and tricks AI into misidentifying a photo?

  29. Randy Hudson

    I want to be protected. I'm going to go take some nude pics and upload them to FB asap.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Or just create an algorithm that finds and deletes all nude photo's on facebuck? Maybe it might offend someone on somebody else's behalf, isn't the internets loaded with enough skinflicks to satisfy without it having to be 'on social' as well?

  31. Anonymous C0ward
    Devil

    Having just read the article about SSL-stripping proxy boxes

    This is very interesting.

  32. David Roberts
    Coat

    I assume all this technology

    Works on partial photographs as well.

    Including the ones where you Photoshopped in the excited donkey with the straw hat and earrings?

    Or does that rely on the existing technology for tagging pictures already uploaded?

    Cue a game of Photoshop whack-a-mole.

    Going out for some popcorn. ->

  33. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Facepalm

    20 percent time project

    Subsequent investigation found that the electronic eavesdropping was part of an engineer’s 20-percent-time project; the engineer had urged the company’s legal team to weigh in before deploying the code to the Street View fleet, but the request slipped through the cracks.

    https://www.wired.com/2014/04/threatlevel_0401_streetview/

    Crack...

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/08/google_must_destroy_data/

    Does FB have something like a Google 20-percent time project for their engineers?

    I can see the headline -

    Oops a daisy says Zuckerberg - one of our engineers has been a naughty boy

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You Anglos Are BETTER THAN COMEDY !

    Really, WTF ? People should send their naked pictures to the CIA-sponsored Facebook thing ?

    What could possibly go wrong with that ?

    The next thing is that we send our DNA to Twitter, I guess.

  35. Snowy Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Take a picure

    Then write some text over (maybe in red), will this nice software still find a match?

  36. JLV
    Paris Hilton

    I don't get it

    Isn't FB really prudish already, to the point that they've banned breastfeeding pix and the like?

    If so, what would these to-be-blocked nudie pix be doing on their site? Wouldn't they just get taken down right away? What are they then achieving by this rather disturbing initiative?

    1. Teiwaz

      Re: I don't get it

      Isn't FB really prudish already, to the point that they've banned breastfeeding pix and the like?

      Of course. It's an American site. I'm not saying Americans don't have healthy depictions of nudity, but that the exploititive depictions swamped those almost as soon as the liberalisation* of the sixties came in.

      * apologies to all US citizens offended by the use of 'liberal', but other parts of the planet have other ideas what it means.

  37. bexley

    ah, this sounds like a good idea,

    I mean what could possibly go wrong when you put all your compromising photos onto facebook servers and most likely have to hand over the rights to those images in the process.

    Facebook have been such angels with respecting peoples privacy in the past.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Facebook Requests Blackmail Material"

    You can trust Facebook.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Didn't this just used to be called the Readers Wives section?

    I don't know about you but I'd really be wanting to pay very close attention to the small print in the terms and conditions before launching pictures of my ass into cyber space?

    Surely it will just become an enormously exciting challenge for spotty 14 year old school boys to hack into the F*c*book naughty pictures server.

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WTF???

    "Humans rather than algorithms will view the naked images voluntarily sent to Facebook in a scheme being trialled in Australia to combat revenge porn."

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/41928848

  41. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Coat

    ###holes

    If enough FB users send pictures of their aforementioned orifice to FB, then, FB can claim to have the definitive repository of xxxholes in the world

  42. MachDiamond Silver badge

    What does FB sell?

    Facebook sells information about it's users that they have been more than happy to submit in various forms. FB and other companies collate that information with information they acquire from other sources. What would keep them from matching up nude photos with individuals using facial recognition/body recognition? You don't even have to have an account if some horrible person you thought of as a friend posted a picture of you and tagged it with your name. FB has a nasty habit of turning private things public without notice and even sometimes by accident. They might even "accidentally" make the nude photos available to their customers (not users, people that give them money for user information) due to a misconfigured flag or something. After noticing that bandwidth is off the hook, they might plug the leak, but the valley below will already be flooded.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like