Children as young as 11 are among the reported victims of nonconsensual pornography or what is commonly known as revenge porn. There is no collective data yet as to the number of total cases, but millions of people on the internet are exposed to such privacy threat, according to the Data & Society Research Institute.
Facebook partners with the Australian government to test out a method to help fight revenge porn on the internet, particularly on social media platforms. The partnership made a head-turning request on Wednesday, November 8 after announcing that they need volunteers who can send their nude photos for the pilot.
How does it work?
The social media giant will encrypt private images using hashing, or the use of digital fingerprints or code on images to block any future attempts to upload these similar images. In simplest terms, if someone sends or posts hashed images on Facebook, Messenger or Instagram, the databank of these services will be able to detect these images based on their hashing, and as a result, publishing of hashed images will have interfered in seconds.
Australia's e-Safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant tells ABC News how this test would go.
"It would be like sending yourself your image in email, but obviously this is a much safer, secure end-to-end way of sending the image without sending it through the ether," says Grant.
She adds Facebook will not be storing the image but the link using artificial intelligence and other photo-matching technologies.
"So if somebody tried to upload that same image, which would have the same digital footprint or hash value, it will be prevented from being uploaded," explains Grant.
Will it really work?
At the moment, no one can exactly tell how effective this test will be until being played out. Even so, cybersecurity solution vendor Kaspersky Lab believes hashing "has real potential" to solve this privacy threat. Since end-to-end encryption bars Facebook from viewing the hashed images, the only worry Kaspersky Lab has is the inability of machine learning to distinguish a nude photo from a non-nude one, which can be falsely encrypted.
At the moment, users can only hope for the positive outcome of the test to prevent potential victims from falling prey to malicious individuals.
