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This is interesting to me because when I worked at car2go a few years ago something similar happened. They updated the app sign-up process with a step where yo
by excar2gothrow 7y ago
This is interesting to me because when I worked at car2go a few years ago something similar happened.
They updated the app sign-up process with a step where you had to take a photograph of your driver's license with your phone, and then take a photo of yourself (to confirm that the license you were signing up with was indeed yourself). These two photographs were not checked manually but were "analyzed" but a facial recognition thing. They did this to streamline the sign up process and get people access to the vehicles with an active membership quicker.
But, when this feature was introduced it was almost immediately abused by a network of fraudsters that had stolen driver's license and stolen credit cards. They used GIS (google image search) to find photos of similar faces to the faces that were on their stolen driver's licenses and uploaded a photo of that face with their phone.
I discovered this when tracking unusual car activity and investigating the new accounts that were driving them and seeing the weird staged headshots of US Senators and other professionally taken photographs that populate GIS results as the submitted "selfie" photo's that were supposed to confirm the new member's identity.
BTW, much like the article mentions, our European counterparts were surprised with this abuse and "hacking" of the system and said they never experienced it over there while running this feature for months before us.
- snarf21 7y agoIt seems like the thieves were mostly targeting Mercedes and other high end cars. It seems like there is an easy solution to just rent domestic mid-size cars and/or add the extra security checks in for people who want luxury cars. Car2Go made it too easy to steal luxury cars seems more like the real issue.
- dwyerm 7y agoMaybe, but at the other end are the bike- and scooter-share systems. I suspect the perceived cheapness of the products contributes to how many of them end up thrown off the ends of piers. Personally, I really miss Car2Go's old SMART cars. They sucked. They sucked sooooo bad. They were terrible cars. I hated them! But they were damned easy to park, they were dead-simple to operate, and they were easy to spot on the street. I want those back, and would rather not drive a 'luxury' car where I spend the first two minutes of my rental trying to figure out how to adjust the seat and turn off the radio. So maybe making the cars more luxurious makes them less likely to be abused.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoYeah, the Smarts were great. And you could pop the rear window open and tuck a bike in the back, with the wheel wedged under the front seat and the front fork sticking out the car. Best car for supplementing bike transit.
- dwyerm 7y agoFWIW, Lime appears to be trying to answer my desire for tiny carshares with their 'LimePod' branded fleet of Fiat 500s in the Seattle. I haven't tried one, yet, so I don't know how well it works, or if you can wedge a bike in the back. :)
- sbierwagen 7y agoI rented one a couple weeks ago to, coincidentally, drive back to my apartment to get a replacement inner tube for a stranded bike. If there's a way to get a bike in one without damaging the seats, I couldn't figure it out.
- edraferi 7y agoThere’s a start up called TruePic that’s building a solution to this problem. Basically their platform helps you get trusted pictures from users. https://truepic.com/ https://truepic.com/
- dmitrygr 7y agoThat is one of the most idiotic things I have ever seen. As a PoC, I built an Android build on my pixel which played a video to any app that requested camera (instead of actual camera content) It works and apps cannot tell the difference
- milsorgen 7y agoAs a PotL I am wondering what does being a PoC have to do with anything?
- sujal 7y agoI think you're thinking different acronyms? He meant Proof of concept?
- titanomachy 7y agoHaha "person of colour"
- pgl 7y agoWhat does PotL stand for in this case?