from the another-vulnerability dept
For quite some time now we’ve been pointing out the many harms of age verification technologies, and how they’re a disaster for privacy. In particular, we’ve noted that if you have someone collecting biometric information on people, that data itself becomes a massive risk since it will be targeted.
And, remember, a year and a half ago, the Age Verification Providers Association posted a comment right here on Techdirt saying not to worry about the privacy risks, as all they wanted to do was scan everyone’s face to visit a website (perhaps making you turn to the left or right to prove “liveness”).
Anyway, now a report has come out that some Chinese hackers have been tricking people into having their faces scanned, so that the hackers can then use the resulting scan to access accounts.
Cool cool, nothing could possibly go wrong in now requiring more and more people to normalize the idea of scanning your face to access a website. Nothing at all.
And no, this isn’t about age verification, but still, the normalization of facial scanning is a problem, as it’s such an obvious target for scammers and hackers.