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When I was growing up you never posted your photo online where strangers could see it. Earlier than that, it was also considered proper etiquette to ask before

When I was growing up you never posted your photo online where strangers could see it. Earlier than that, it was also considered proper etiquette to ask before taking someone's photo. There's been a huge culture shift and some of the outcomes are disheartening but quite predictable. ...little recourse other than to continuously report fake profiles across social media platforms If they don't take down your fraudulent likeness or their efforts toward that end are a joke, hire a lawyer and put them in touch with the owners of the site.

jack_pp 4y ago
Considering how good face recognition is these days it would be nice to have legislation in place that you have to give explicit consent to any website in order to use your image. Govt can crawl the web and block websites from the countries ISP that don't comply. Hard to see another automated solution for this problem
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  Indeed, that would surely stop Nigerian thiefs from using your photos. Impervious strategy.
  - jack_pp 4y ago
    Use them for what?
    - iLoveOncall 4y ago
      Exactly what the article is about?
      - filoleg 4y ago
        Yeah, I am disheartened by some comments in this thread as well. Sure, let's implement these laws that essentially will be used for stiffening art, at least all these scammers (who already do illegal things) will start following the law, and these romance scams will stop /s. This is like the gun control debate, but much worse. At least with gun control, it has strong ties to geographic boundaries, given that guns are physical objects, so I can see some decent arguments for why it (at least hypothetically) could work (e.g., Australia). But with photos posted online, the locale is global internet, where everything is instantly reachable and replicable with pretty much zero marginal cost, from anywhere in the world. These proposals are imo peak idealism without much pragmatic thought applied at all. Mind you, I am not saying "let's do nothing, things are all good." But some of the proposed "fixes" to this I've seen here are truly useless at best and harmful at worst.
      - jack_pp 4y ago
        I didn't read the article tbh but the comment I replied to implied they used fake social media profiles which makes sense and would be prevented by what I suggested. The scammers would need to make a profile on a website you're familiar with and if those websites guarantee that a profile is who they say they are by law then all these problems go away. Doesn't matter if someone outside the system gets your photos
        iLoveOncall 4y ago
        Read the article and come back to delete your nonsensical comments once you realize how irrelevant they are to the subject matter.
        jack_pp 4y ago
        I'm sorry but I don't understand your vitriol. > The women claimed to have met him on a dating app, social media platform, or a less-expected online space, like an app-based word or puzzle game (Words With Friends is popular with scammers)—anything with a chat feature. What the women didn’t know was that the 50-something fellow with the goatee who smiled back at them in photograph after photograph wasn’t the same person they were speaking with. Their charming lover was a scripted character used by gangs of overseas fakers to bilk cash from unsuspecting romantics, and Geras’ stolen photos were the bait. The article says the man feared for his life because husbands of these women called him. Presumably these women are from the same country as this guy so my suggestion would've stopped most of those vectors of attack. I mean yeah if they gave their phone number in the chat of a puzzle game then the scammers could send whatever pictures they wanted but that's a much harder thing to pull off than scam someone on a dating app or with a fake social media profile
- bearmode 4y ago
  Congrats, now 90+% of all photographs taken outside are completely unshareable online, and the > century old art of street photography is dead.
  - jack_pp 4y ago
    Honestly I don't see anything wrong with that. The century old art is not dead, you can showcase your photos in a gallery just not online, without explicit consent of your subjects. A hundred years ago we didn't have this problem. Most portraits have their background blurred so those wouldn't be a problem. Street photos can have the faces blurred. Why are we protecting sharing these street photos of random people anyway?
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Seems like victory for privacy. You could get a AI to censor people faces automatically too.
AshamedCaptain 4y ago
> When I was growing up you never posted your photo online where strangers could see it. I have _never_ uploaded my photo "online" voluntarily, but still it was common to put your photo in many places that were easily reachable by the common public. My school published a yearbook with my photo, for example. Many journal papers I've published had my photo attached, starting at least from the 90s. Some of these have been digitized and thus my photo is easily reachable for anyone who searches for my full name, without me ever voluntarily uploading it "online". > Earlier than that, it was also considered proper etiquette to ask before taking someone's photo. This much is still true, or can you imagine going around randomly flashing people with your phone on the street? Actually I think this has improved over time. I'm far from a celebrity, but my photo is on the press -- and they never asked for permission. Nowadays, they do.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  I don't put my photo up either. I know of an old newspaper clipping that made its way online and of course yearbooks have as well. The other way my photo has made it online is pictures with friends and family, generally facebook. Luckily, between that and my name being shared by several people in my country who are more comfortable with online persona's, and no one is actually going to find my image unless they're trying really hard to specifically target me. Your point is a good one and I know I'm lucky in that respect. I very much miss the days when anonymity was a major value in online interactions.
joenot443 4y ago
I hire a lawyer, they submit a takedown request to FB or TikTok or wherever else they’re using my identity, now what? Correct me if I’m wrong, but if someone lives across the world and is doing all this impersonation online, what legal recourse does a lawyer have access to? Drag them to The Hague? I’ve been in cases before where someone in a different continent is trying to impersonate or sink you, and I can say in my experience there’s little a Canadian lawyer could have done.
- rvba 4y ago
  I wonder if a local lawyer can do something if the scammers' IP / country can be somehow identified. I wouldnt expect much, maybe the scammers will just switch to a different picture, what still counts as a win.
- rkagerer 4y ago
  True it's more difficult cross-jurisdiction. Especially if the country doesn't have a robust legal system. I've had a lawyer hire another lawyer in said jurisdiction to help with enforcement across borders.
coldtea 4y ago
>When I was growing up you never posted your photo online where strangers could see it. When was that? For those over 40, when they grew up there was no "online". And if one was a kid or teenager growing up the the mid to late nineties, people had personal websites and online photos of themselves up regularly, and it wasn't considered much. You didn't have regular snaps of your life, or pictures of the food you ate, like later, but you could well have your picture and nobody would consider it strange. Heck, even university professors and professionals of all kinds had personal and business pages with their photos on...
- mcv 4y ago
  > When was that? For those over 40, when they grew up there was no "online". There were BBSs. But I don't think anyone would appreciate trying to upload a photo through a 300 baud modem.
- lsaferite 4y ago
  FWIW, I'm over 40 and was "online" as a teen, first with BBS and then with dial-up internet.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Sure, and one could be 80 and be "online" as a teen on his parent's ARPANET account. But it's not the online kind we're discussing here, where upload pictures of yourself to the web was considered uncouth (as per the parent commenter), because it wasn't considered as good or bad at all, as it was just not a thing people could do at the time (not even BBS users were actually doing that, except perhaps in some incredibly rare cases where someone could get access to a scanner).
    - lsaferite 4y ago
      I was simply replying to your statement, nothing more. >For those over 40, when they grew up there was no "online".
- rkagerer 4y ago

jack_pp 4y ago

Considering how good face recognition is these days it would be nice to have legislation in place that you have to give explicit consent to any website in order to use your image. Govt can crawl the web and block websites from the countries ISP that don't comply. Hard to see another automated solution for this problem

iLoveOncall 4y ago
Indeed, that would surely stop Nigerian thiefs from using your photos. Impervious strategy.
- jack_pp 4y ago
  Use them for what?
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    Exactly what the article is about?
    - filoleg 4y ago
      Yeah, I am disheartened by some comments in this thread as well. Sure, let's implement these laws that essentially will be used for stiffening art, at least all these scammers (who already do illegal things) will start following the law, and these romance scams will stop /s. This is like the gun control debate, but much worse. At least with gun control, it has strong ties to geographic boundaries, given that guns are physical objects, so I can see some decent arguments for why it (at least hypothetically) could work (e.g., Australia). But with photos posted online, the locale is global internet, where everything is instantly reachable and replicable with pretty much zero marginal cost, from anywhere in the world. These proposals are imo peak idealism without much pragmatic thought applied at all. Mind you, I am not saying "let's do nothing, things are all good." But some of the proposed "fixes" to this I've seen here are truly useless at best and harmful at worst.
    - jack_pp 4y ago
      I didn't read the article tbh but the comment I replied to implied they used fake social media profiles which makes sense and would be prevented by what I suggested. The scammers would need to make a profile on a website you're familiar with and if those websites guarantee that a profile is who they say they are by law then all these problems go away. Doesn't matter if someone outside the system gets your photos
      - iLoveOncall 4y ago
        Read the article and come back to delete your nonsensical comments once you realize how irrelevant they are to the subject matter.
        jack_pp 4y ago
        I'm sorry but I don't understand your vitriol. > The women claimed to have met him on a dating app, social media platform, or a less-expected online space, like an app-based word or puzzle game (Words With Friends is popular with scammers)—anything with a chat feature. What the women didn’t know was that the 50-something fellow with the goatee who smiled back at them in photograph after photograph wasn’t the same person they were speaking with. Their charming lover was a scripted character used by gangs of overseas fakers to bilk cash from unsuspecting romantics, and Geras’ stolen photos were the bait. The article says the man feared for his life because husbands of these women called him. Presumably these women are from the same country as this guy so my suggestion would've stopped most of those vectors of attack. I mean yeah if they gave their phone number in the chat of a puzzle game then the scammers could send whatever pictures they wanted but that's a much harder thing to pull off than scam someone on a dating app or with a fake social media profile
bearmode 4y ago
Congrats, now 90+% of all photographs taken outside are completely unshareable online, and the > century old art of street photography is dead.
- jack_pp 4y ago
  Honestly I don't see anything wrong with that. The century old art is not dead, you can showcase your photos in a gallery just not online, without explicit consent of your subjects. A hundred years ago we didn't have this problem. Most portraits have their background blurred so those wouldn't be a problem. Street photos can have the faces blurred. Why are we protecting sharing these street photos of random people anyway?
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Seems like victory for privacy. You could get a AI to censor people faces automatically too.

AshamedCaptain 4y ago

> When I was growing up you never posted your photo online where strangers could see it. I have _never_ uploaded my photo "online" voluntarily, but still it was common to put your photo in many places that were easily reachable by the common public. My school published a yearbook with my photo, for example. Many journal papers I've published had my photo attached, starting at least from the 90s. Some of these have been digitized and thus my photo is easily reachable for anyone who searches for my full name, without me ever voluntarily uploading it "online". > Earlier than that, it was also considered proper etiquette to ask before taking someone's photo. This much is still true, or can you imagine going around randomly flashing people with your phone on the street? Actually I think this has improved over time. I'm far from a celebrity, but my photo is on the press -- and they never asked for permission. Nowadays, they do.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
I don't put my photo up either. I know of an old newspaper clipping that made its way online and of course yearbooks have as well. The other way my photo has made it online is pictures with friends and family, generally facebook. Luckily, between that and my name being shared by several people in my country who are more comfortable with online persona's, and no one is actually going to find my image unless they're trying really hard to specifically target me. Your point is a good one and I know I'm lucky in that respect. I very much miss the days when anonymity was a major value in online interactions.

joenot443 4y ago

I hire a lawyer, they submit a takedown request to FB or TikTok or wherever else they’re using my identity, now what? Correct me if I’m wrong, but if someone lives across the world and is doing all this impersonation online, what legal recourse does a lawyer have access to? Drag them to The Hague? I’ve been in cases before where someone in a different continent is trying to impersonate or sink you, and I can say in my experience there’s little a Canadian lawyer could have done.

rvba 4y ago
I wonder if a local lawyer can do something if the scammers' IP / country can be somehow identified. I wouldnt expect much, maybe the scammers will just switch to a different picture, what still counts as a win.
rkagerer 4y ago
True it's more difficult cross-jurisdiction. Especially if the country doesn't have a robust legal system. I've had a lawyer hire another lawyer in said jurisdiction to help with enforcement across borders.

coldtea 4y ago

>When I was growing up you never posted your photo online where strangers could see it. When was that? For those over 40, when they grew up there was no "online". And if one was a kid or teenager growing up the the mid to late nineties, people had personal websites and online photos of themselves up regularly, and it wasn't considered much. You didn't have regular snaps of your life, or pictures of the food you ate, like later, but you could well have your picture and nobody would consider it strange. Heck, even university professors and professionals of all kinds had personal and business pages with their photos on...

mcv 4y ago
> When was that? For those over 40, when they grew up there was no "online". There were BBSs. But I don't think anyone would appreciate trying to upload a photo through a 300 baud modem.
lsaferite 4y ago
FWIW, I'm over 40 and was "online" as a teen, first with BBS and then with dial-up internet.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Sure, and one could be 80 and be "online" as a teen on his parent's ARPANET account. But it's not the online kind we're discussing here, where upload pictures of yourself to the web was considered uncouth (as per the parent commenter), because it wasn't considered as good or bad at all, as it was just not a thing people could do at the time (not even BBS users were actually doing that, except perhaps in some incredibly rare cases where someone could get access to a scanner).
  - lsaferite 4y ago
    I was simply replying to your statement, nothing more. >For those over 40, when they grew up there was no "online".
rkagerer 4y ago