Take your pic
Digitizing this simple aspect of our lives is more convenient, costsaving and valuable in many ways
With the advent of social media, the posting of photographs, especially of one’s face, is possible with a touch of a finger.
The era when we had to manually take photos, bring the film to photo stores to be developed, and neatly keep the printed copies inside a photo album had ended.
Instead, we upload digital copies of our files online in digital albums hosted by service providers such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like.
Admittedly, digitizing this simple aspect of our lives is more convenient, cost-saving and valuable in many ways. We can, for example, integrate and migrate our photos in one social media account such as Facebook to other sites such as Dropbox to preserve them. We can also do these not only to still photographs but also to our videos.
While these simple activities are harmless, we must always be wary of the potential privacy risks of thoughtlessly uploading our photographs online, especially when they are made publicly available.
In 2018, Facebook encountered a bug that allowed developers to potentially access photos that are not posted in user timelines, including pictures that users
uploaded but chose not to pose. The glitch included sensitive or intimate images that may have reputational implications to users concerned, since the bug allowed wrongful access to users’ pictures.
Photos are likewise used in AI (artificial intelligence)-based facial recognition. For AI to produce accurate results on some issues such as race and ethnicity, it would need massive data sets of faces, skin color, and expressions. And they source these data sets from scraping publicly available information online, such as photo hosting sites and search engines.
Photos from your smartphone also contain hidden data aside from your faces. For example, extra metadata can be stored in a photo, such as GPS location at the date and time the photograph was captured, its image size and format. According to experts, it is possible that when we upload these photos online, the platform may capture these metadata and make use of these for other purposes.
An entity can stitch these pieces of information, such as where you usually take photos, the places you ordinarily go to, or even your food and drink favorites, to determine, up to a certain extent, your personal choices and preference, which are valuable information for targeted ads.
According to experts, it is possible that when we upload these photos online, the platform may capture these metadata and make use of these for other purposes.
As demonstrated, even simple online activities such as posting our pictures online can have more significant, unexpected results. Hence, users need to practice consciously healthy digital hygiene. A simple way to test your success is by searching your name and image in search engines, such as Google. If you find your photos, then it may be the proper time to revisit your privacy settings in all platforms you use.
For those processing user photographs, the National Privacy Commission reminds that photographs are personal information that comes under the purview and protection of the Data Privacy Act. In this regard, we urge and caution data controllers and processors using facial data to abide by the general principles of data privacy to avoid legal exposures.