Tag Archive for: Facebook’s

Can Facebook’s smart glasses be smart about security and privacy?

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Facebook’s recently announced Ray-Ban Stories glasses, which have two cameras and three microphones built in, are in the news again.

Facebook has kicked off a worldwide project dubbed Ego4D to research new uses for smart glasses.

Ray-Ban Stories glasses capture audio and video so wearers can record their experiences and interactions. The research project aims to add augmented reality features to the glasses, potentially including facial recognition and other artificial intelligence technologies that could provide wearers with a wealth of information, including the ability to get answers to questions like “Where did I leave my keys?”

Several other technology companies like Google, Microsoft, Snap, Vuzix and Lenovo have also been experimenting with versions of augmented or mixed reality glasses. Augmented reality glasses can display useful information within the lenses, providing an electronically enhanced view of the world. For example, smart glasses could draw a line over the road to show you the next turn or let you see a restaurant’s Yelp rating as you look at its sign.

However, some of the information that augmented reality glasses give their users could include identifying people in the glasses’ field of view and displaying personal information about them. It was not too long ago that Google introduced Google Glass, only to face a public backlash for simply recording people. Compared to being recorded by smartphones in public, being recorded by smart glasses feels to people like a greater invasion of privacy.

As a researcher who studies computer security and privacy, I believe it’s important for technology companies to proceed with caution and consider the security and privacy risks of augmented reality.

Smartphones vs. smart glasses

Even though people are now used to being photographed in public, they also expect the photographer typically to raise their smartphone to compose a photo. Augmented reality glasses fundamentally disrupt or violate this sense of normalcy. The public setting may be the same, but the sheer scale and approach of recording has changed.

A pair of sunglasses
Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories glasses capture photos and video and play audio,…

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Facebook’s Two Factor Authentication Via Key On Mobile Devices Is The New Means of Optimum Security / Digital Information World

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Online security is a basic necessity nowadays. With technology so advanced it is someone’s left handed game to hack into your account and log you out of it and therefore companies are trying to make more secured and reliable methods to protect your account.

A few months ago Twitter became a game changer when it introduced support for a two factor authentication keys for their application on mobile devices and while Facebook had a similar thing going on for their desktops, this was never introduced for Facebook mobile.

But what is a two factor authentication key?

It is basically a USB like key that protects your account information and helps you log in into it through either wirelessly through Bluetooth or by manually plugging it in your phone and there will be only one key for one account of which you will have the ownership. Since Facebook already had this for their desktop it was about time to introduce this on their mobile application as well and that is exactly what the tech giant did.

As of today, Facebook has started allowing users to register hardware keys on both Android and iOS devices. In order to enroll your key for the application, all you have to do is head over to Security and Login in the settings part of the app and Security Key under Two-Factor Authentication. Keys can unlock your account wirelessly via Bluetooth or by physically plugging into your phone for a wired connection.

However, this feature has not completely rolled out for the general public as when some people tried logging in an error occurred on their screens meaning it will take some time before the feature is officially rolled out.

Facebook in one of its announcement encouraged the general public to the security key feature regardless of what mobile device you are using or whether or not you have chances of getting your account hacked because this feature is the most secured form of privacy and security any user can achieve until now. However, the company will still offer other sources of security incase users do not switch to this key method like authentication apps, text message verification, and recovery codes, though none of these are as secure as an actual key.

It is great to see tech giants…

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Opinion | What Keeps Facebook’s Election Security Chief Up at Night?

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One thing Facebook started doing after I joined is we began publicly announcing coordinated inauthentic behavior (a somewhat vague term that means using fake accounts to artificially boost information designed to mislead) takedowns. We’ve found more than 100 of these in the last three years and we announce them and publicly share info and give this to third-party researchers so they can give their own independent assessment of what’s happening. As a result, these operations are getting caught earlier and reaching fewer people and having less impact. That’s also because government organizations, civil society groups and journalists are all helping to identify this.

What that means is that their tactics are shifting. Foreign adversaries are doing things like luring real journalists to create divisive content.

Are these malicious actors trying to use fear to get us to manipulate ourselves?

Influence operations are essentially weaponized uncertainty. They’re trying to get us all to be afraid. Russian actors want us to think there’s a Russian under every rock. Foreign actors want us to think they have completely compromised our systems, and there isn’t evidence for that. In a situation like this, having the facts becomes extremely useful. Being able to see the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of these campaigns is useful. It’s a tool we can use to help protect ourselves. We know they’re planning to play on our fears. They’re trying to trick us into doing this to ourselves, and we don’t have to take the bait.

It seems we as a nation are our own worst enemy in this respect.

It’s like you wake up in the morning on Election Day and the whole process is this black box. It feels like jumping off a cliff and you land at the bottom when the votes are counted and you don’t really see the things that happened along the way. But really there’s a staircase you can take. There’s a bunch of steps. Voting starts, then officials begin counting ballots. There are controls and systems in place, and at the end you’ve made it to the bottom of the staircase. We need to do our part to show people the staircase and what happens in each moment to say, “There’s a plan to all…

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