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Let’s Face It: Pirates Won’t Stop Stealing Unless You Make Them

piracy If all it took to stop crime was to tell it to stop, then we would have no crime. Sadly it is a lot harder than that to get people to stop committing things like identity theft, fraud and worse. This is especially true when it comes to pirates.

Online “pirates” are people who search websites for information that they can steal and use for their own benefit. They want your passwords, your account numbers, credit cards and worst of all they want to steal your face. Your face is like your fingerprint, it is unique and only belongs to you, so you should be able to control and make all the decisions for where your face shows up.

Online pirates will steal your photos and upload them to different websites pretending to be you. They will steal photos of your loved ones and even your children. While a lot of websites claim to have privacy settings and to not sell your data to third parties, we know that not to be the case. But what can you do to protect yourself? How would you even know if someone downloaded your profile picture and is pretending to be you? FaceChex is the answer to both of those questions.

FaceChex is an online platform whose main job is to make sure you take back control. Once you sign up for FaceChex and choose your plan, you can upload the photos you want to keep safe: your face, your children, or anything that you find important. Once you do that, FaceChex will scan the internet to search for any other places where photos that match your unique facial fingerprint are being used.

Once you get that report back, you can choose which sites are valid to you and which sites are not. For the sites that are not, you are given the option to take legal actions against these sites to force them to take down your photos. Pirates won’t ever stop unless you make them and FaceChex gives you the tools to make this happen.

Protect Your Identity By Fingerprinting Your Face

facial fingerprint We hear about identity theft all the time, whether it is from commercials for consumers who have had their identity stolen, or possibly family members that have had to go down the long hard road of getting their identity back. People are constantly discovering that out there, a thief is spending their money, running up their credit, or worse; but we almost never think about thieves stealing our faces.

We don’t think about how someone can steal our pictures and create an entire online presence, trick friends, family and coworkers into believing it is them or even catfish other people! Your face is unique just like your fingerprint, and only you should be able to choose where and what your face is being used for.

There are big headlines of stars and others having their pictures stolen, or “deep fake” videos being created of them. In these instances, fake porn can be made and to look like their face is on pictures that they do not want out in the world, being distributed or even sold. But it’s not just the starlets that are in danger of this huge scam: regular people are being targeted everyday, including your children and loved ones.

FaceChex has created an online platform that combats this potentially life-altering crime. When you sign up for FaceChex, the site is going to create a unique fingerprint of your face that they can pick up anywhere your photos are being used without your consent. You have different plan options so you can scan for 5 photos, 10 photos, 15 photos or more.

Once you have saved your specified media library, FaceChex is going to scan hundreds upon thousands of websites for you and report back to you everywhere where your photos have popped up. Once that happens you get to go through that list and verify if it’s a site you want your photos on, or if that site is using your photos illegally. If they are in fact using your photos without your permission you can take the legal steps, like filing a DCMA to force them to take it down. This is how FaceChex helps not only protects you as an individual but also protects your children, loved ones, or anyone worried about protecting images of their face online.

Social Media Posts Aren’t Supposed To Be Stolen But Are All Too Often

stolen picture Social media has boomed in the last decade, and using multiple sites we share pictures of our children, ourselves, our loved ones and even our pets. We update people every day on our whereabouts and what we are doing, what we like and when we are or are not at home. While this keeps us connected to our friends and family, strangers follow us and we sometimes gain friends that we haven’t ever actually met in real life; and underneath all of the good is a dangerous world of cyberstalking, stolen identities and photos being saved without our permission.

Sales of private information and violations of privacy agreements are always happening. Anyone in the world with less than good intentions could come across pictures of you, your children or your loved ones and save them to use for not-so-wholesome posts later on. They can create entire profiles pretending to be you to gain access to your friends and family, and even your jobs and livelihoods. There is a way to stop all of this, but how? What can you do to protect yourself from these people who are out to harm whoever they can in one of the easiest ways possible?

FaceChex is a platform that was created for your protection. FaceChex’s main goal is to stop third party users, people and companies who are not you, from using your private and personal content without your permission. Signing up for FaceChex is easy with just a few simple steps.

They will ask you to upload a photo of yourself or your loved ones so they can scan the Internet for matching photos that are being used without your permission. This way you know exactly where your face is popping up and why. They will even help you to take down those photos that are being shared without your consent through legal forms like DCMAs.

Safety and privacy is the number one concern of FaceChex, and something that all individuals should be putting as a top priority in this day and age of online use.

Why do we no longer care about privacy?

On February 4, Facebook turned 15 years old. Despite the record profits made in 2018, this will be remembered as the worst year of its history in public relations due to the numerous controversies in which the social network was involved.

Throughout this period, the social network became a company that dominated the world of internet communication. Only Facebook, according to data released by the company itself, now has 2.3 billion users – a third of the global population.

Last year, the Menlo Park, Calif., Company reported a net note of $ 22.1 billion. Along with Google, Facebook controls about 60% of the money invested in online advertising worldwide.

Much of its growth has been built upon the steady erosion of societal norms around privacy, encouraging us to share ever more of our lives with ever more of the world.

Facebook’s ubiquity in digital communications is a double-edged sword. It is the main reason for the company’s extraordinary profits, but also why the company starts to be criticized and monitored with greater attention by regulatory bodies of the different governments of the planet.

Violations of privacy and sale of user data, abuse of advertising practices, the disclosure of false information, platform security, and vulnerabilities to hackers are viewed as the Achilles heel of one of the most powerful Internet companies currently.

As Kalev Leetaru assertively wrote in his Forbes article, “one of the most existential questions of the modern world is why we as a society have accepted the steady erosion of our digital rights and the loss of the concept of privacy.”

“Why do we no longer care about privacy?” is the question Leetaruy tries to answer. In his analysis, Facebook was able to conditionate the entire human race to give up its privacy in return for free access to a global communications network.

We need to stop bullying, online and offline.

Bullying is defined as a set of acts of physical and/or psychological violence, done intentionally and repeated. Its main characteristic is that aggression (physical, moral or verbal) is intentional, recurring and occurs between pairs. We are used to associating bullying with teens and children, but it can happen in all ages. FaceChex is an online platform that stops third parties from using your private content without your permission. In addition, it also offers protect.facechex.com, an anti-bullying system that allows the user to create and send a tracking link to the bully.

Technology is an extra minefield of the present day. Generally, the most common forms of cyberbullying occur through the sending of emails, text messages, spreading offensive photos and videos, manipulating images, insults on social networks, which can even be anonymous and reach an audience infinite and invisible in no time. Adults, children, and teenagers engage is this type of violence on a daily basis.

One of the Facechex missions it to fight online exploitation. The company is dedicated to Image and Identity based personal and professional protection. It has prevented hundreds of serious online leaks of personal and protected content. Armed with next-gen technology, which scans the Internet, FaceChex alerts the users about any unauthorized use of their content using image recognition and artificial intelligence.

Slonje and Smith in a 2008 study named “Cyberbullying: Another main type of bullying”, realized that the occurrence of cyberbullying through the use of images and/or videos were perceived by students as having a greater gravity than other forms of cyberbullying, mainly due to the high public they can potentially visualize, as well as the fact that they can be identified.

And that was exactly what happened some days ago when a controversial video went viral. The encounter at the Lincoln Memorial in DC generated an avalanche of accusations from both sides and, of course, lead to cyberbullying. The situation makes us reflect on the lack of empathy and tolerance of the present day. Incomplete, distorted or even false stories can take catastrophic proportions on both online and offline world. And always affects all parts involved.

Contrary to popular belief, the effects of bullying hit both sides. In the case of the victims, there is a huge range of consequences, such as difficulty making friends in isolation, sadness, and depression. Among the aggressors, the list of effects includes the difficulty of adhering to rules. With the aggravating factor that the need to victimize the other to strengthen their position within a group can last into adulthood (in the case of children).

Facechex aims to stop bullying of all types with protect.facechex.com anti-bullying system. It’s easy, fast, and totally safe. All you need to do it’s to sign up to start protecting yourself and the ones you love.

Scarlett Johansson opens up about deepfake videos and online exploitation

Earlier this week, the actress Scarlett Johansson talked about a problem she’s been facing for a while: deepfake porn. That’s not the first time she sees her privacy gone viral. In 2012, a hacker was sentenced to 10 years in prison after leaking nude photos of her and other celebrities, setting an example to warn future thieves.

As we mentioned in a previous post, Deepfake videos are generated by the application of a technology similar to the “face swap” used in Instagram and other networks. The algorithm has been used to superimpose faces of women – many of them female personalities – to people in pornographic videos. The result can be highly realistic fake videos.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Johansson has spoken out against deepfakes. One fake video, described as real “leaked” footage, has been watched on a major porn site more than 1.5 million times. “Clearly this doesn’t affect me as much because people assume it’s not actually me in a porno, however demeaning it is. I think it’s up to an individual to fight for their own right to their image, claim damages, etc”, Scarlett comment.

Johansson also mentioned the difficulty in pursuing legally since every country has different laws regarding copyright and the right to your own image. Unfortunately, online exploitation is a long time problem that Facechex is fighting since day one.

“Vulnerable people like women, children and seniors must take extra care to protect their identities and personal content. That will never change no matter how strict Google makes their policies”, she pointed.

“People think that they are protected by their internet passwords and that only public figures or people of interest are hacked. But the truth is, there is no difference between someone hacking my account or someone hacking the person standing behind me on line at the grocery store’s account. It just depends on whether or not someone has the desire to target you.”

FaceChex is an online platform that stops third parties from using your private content without your permission. You can learn more about the company and the technology behind it on our website.

Photo: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock

UK Report warns of the risks involved in exposing data on children in social media and electronic toys.

At first glance, it may seem like something common and harmless, but the exposure of children in the virtual world can be a full plate for big tech companies when it comes to sharing data.

The Who Knows What About Me study by England’s Children’s Commissar Anne Longfield, who works to promote children’s rights, warns of the risks involved in sharing personal information through large technology companies.

In the report, she explains that parents expose their children’s data at a troubling rate. The study estimates that when a child reaches age 18, the volume of content shared over the internet can reach 70,000 posts, and asks parents and schools to examine the types of electronic devices children play with, such as games and toys connected. Longfield argues that these devices can collect data about children, and recommends that governments pressure large technology companies to promote the security of their users’ information.

According to the study, an unimaginable amount of information is being disseminated in new ways because of the emergence of intelligent technologies. Regarding children, this phenomenon may have a greater impact, since they were born in the digital age.

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

How FaceChex works

FaceChex is an online platform that stops third parties from using your private content without your permission.

Watch the video below to understand how you can protect yourself.

Proliferation of ‘deepfakes’ brings up issues of consent and authenticity of the digital image

The fake news universe is gaining a new dimension in 2018: fake videos have recently reached huge popularity in Reddit social network topics. Google Trends data shows peaks in searches for this content in mid-December 2017 and in late January and early February 2018.

Called “deepfakes”, the videos in question are generated by the application of a technology similar to the “face swap” used in Instagram and other networks.

The algorithm has been used to superimpose faces of women – many of them female personalities – to people in pornographic videos. The result can be highly realistic fake videos.

The major concern of experts and others, though, is that face-swap videos spread as a new form of virtual sexual violence against women. And that’s just what happened to Noelle Martin, who has been fighting deepfake pornography for six years. Your photos have been stolen from your personal networks and used on porn sites.

The situation escalated, even more, Martin told TNW: “It then moved to doctoring images of me into graphic pornography, on the cover of pornographic DVDs to fake images of me being ejaculated on.”

That’s why it’s so important to protect your images online. Facechex joined the movement to help make the internet safer and secure for everyone.

If you want to know more about the topic, read this amazing report CNN Business did on how the Pentagon is fighting against deepfake videos.

October is the National Cyber Security Awareness Month

National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) – observed every October – was created as a collaborative effort between government and industry to ensure every American has the resources they need to stay safer and more secure online.

NCSAM has grown exponentially since its inception in 2004, reaching consumers, small and medium-sized businesses, corporations, government entities, the military, educational institutions, and young people nationally and internationally.

It is part of a growing global effort among businesses, government agencies, colleges and universities, associations, nonprofit organizations and individuals to promote the awareness of online safety and privacy.

Among the many topics covered, we find “Stay Safe Online”, “Online Safety Basics”, “Theft, Fraud & Cybercrime”, “Key Account & Devices”, and “Managing your Privacy”.

Click here to read more about our 5 online safety tips.