Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Facebook wants to secretly watch you through your smartphone camera



Facebook wants to get up close and personal with its users after a patent was revealed detailing a desire to secretly watch users through their webcam or smartphone camera, spying on your mood in order to sell you tailored content or advertisements.
The purpose behind the invasive idea is to analyse people through the camera in real time while they browse online and if it recognises you looking happy, bored or sad, it would deliver an advert fitting your emotion. If you were forlorn, for example, it would be able to serve an ad to perk you up, or know what products you had previously looked at online and put them under your nose at just the right time.

Facebook explains in the patent application that a user who looked away during certain content (in their fictional case it was a kitten video) algorithms for the social network would know to not show more of that type of content. In another example it describes how the technology could tell if a user's expression changed while looking at posts or pictures from a certain person and would show more or less of these in the future.
The social network has filed several patents over the years on emotion-based technology but this, based on 'passive imaging data' is perhaps the most unnerving, considering it would take control of cameras that weren't even switched on by the user.
As described by CB Insights: "This patent proposes capturing images of the user through smartphone or laptop cameras, even when the user is not actively using the camera. By visually tracking a user's facial expression, Facebook aims to monitor the user's emotional reactions to different types of content."

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