Shenrancaijing original
Author | Zhou Jifeng Tang Yahua
Edit | dawn
Your face may be stolen.
At the 3.15 party this year, CCTV told ordinary consumers a terrifying fact that your face may be "stolen" at any time.
In the CCTV report, more than 20 well-known brands or institutions, including Kohler Sanitary Ware, BMW, and Jiangsu Grand Theater, illegally collected and even abused facial information by installing face recognition cameras. These businesses have facial information and can gain insights into your age, identity and even emotions and consumption habits.
In front of these businesses, your personal privacy is fully exposed.
Afterwards, Kohler Sanitary Ware responded: The company had removed the camera overnight.
Shenran further in-depth research found that not only Kohler Sanitary Ware, but also many well-known brands on the market, such as KFC, Hey Tea, Liangpin Shop, Shundian, and even Xiaomi and Apple offline stores... have all installed face recognition cameras. Installing face recognition cameras and collecting consumer information seems to be an open secret in offline retail stores.
This also means that in such an information age, consumers are enjoying extremely convenient services on the one hand, and on the other hand they have become lambs to be slaughtered-their facial information has been stolen unknowingly.
Moreover, because the face is bound to personal identity information, once the face information is lost, the individual will face unimaginable consequences. In fact, because of the lack of specific laws and regulations, more and more ordinary people's face information is running naked on the Internet, and a black industry chain of face information reselling has even spawned.
Today, Shenzhen Burns has taken a look at the face recognition industry, and explored who is stealing our facial information, who provided such technical services, and how ordinary consumers should defend their rights.
Who is stealing your face information?
Imagine a scenario where you walk into a store without any problems, take a few glances and feel that you have nothing to buy, then turn your head and leave. But from the moment you enter the door, the face recognition camera installed by the merchant has already started to work. It has captured and recorded your face information without you knowing it, and even grasped your gender through your face. , Age, occupation, mood state, etc...
This is not a fictitious scene in a novel or movie. Such a case of information streaking does happen in real life, just beside you and me.
CCTV's 3.15 party exposed such a horrible case: More than 20 well-known companies such as Kohler and BMW installed facial recognition cameras in their stores to steal consumers' facial information and mark customers' information without the knowledge of consumers. Several times to visit the store, men and women, age and other information, so as to conduct marketing analysis.
At the evening party, CCTV named four companies, and Shen Ran Shun Teng inquired about one of the companies that provides facial feature cameras for companies-Wandian Palm. From the official website, Shenran found that only Wandianzhang is a company that cooperates with customers in various industries such as medicine, shoes and clothing, catering, FMCG, home furnishing, and digital. According to its official website, Wandianzhang has successively served more than 1,000 well-known brands and more than 300,000 stores. Some consumer-familiar leading catering companies such as Heycha, Hefulao Noodles, and KFC, and digital offline physical stores such as JD.com, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Apple have cooperated with Wandianzhang.
And these offline stores are almost all over the current business districts, which means that consumers' facial information may be stolen at any time.
In fact, in the digital economy era, data is a huge asset for businesses.
The person in charge of an advertising technology company once pointed out: "How to allocate our money and budget, how to promote users to choose products at the exposure level, and how to get users to buy. The budget allocation for the entire path can be There is a more scientific approach, that is, to use more data to make better decisions.” And AI is a good starting point.
At the time when AI-based face recognition technology continues to mature, face recognition can not only identify some biological characteristics, such as male and female gender, age, etc., but also automatically generate numbers through faces to rate user behavior.
"As long as you have a face recognition ID number (ie FRID), you can match some other information, such as a mobile phone device number, and then use some tags or portraits in the device number database for matching, and then get the FRID and This person has a richer understanding." The head of the China area of Sizmek, an advertising technology company, once pointed out in a speech. With richer information, businesses can identify whether customers are VIPs, regular customers or new customers, and even predict consumer behavior, so as to carry out precision marketing.
Nowadays, more and more offline merchants begin to use face recognition as a precision marketing method. More and more scenes can obtain facial information silently without the parties’ perception, which has become the merchant’s “acquaintance recognition”. ", the main data source of marketing positioning.
Not only offline stores in shopping malls, but also face recognition advertising screens are launched in many areas. These advertising screens are usually set up next to the elevator car. People passing by the elevator car will be captured by the camera's facial information. In addition, some real estate sales departments have installed face recognition systems to prevent "flying orders" by comparing the faces of customers.
Who provides services behind the scenes?
Who provided these merchants with so-called "face interactive marketing solutions"? CCTV reports pointed out to us the direction - from webcams in the Grand Gateway 66 Max Mara store installed and shops helm of the company , Wuxi BMW 4S shop installed a Swiss company face recognition camera. In addition, the companies involved in the report also include Yoluoke and Yaliang Technology .
What are these companies?
Tianyan Check shows that in June 2017, Wandianzhang completed a 15 million yuan A round of investment by Jinshajiang Ventures. In May last year, Wandianzhang announced the completion of 80 million yuan in Series B financing, led by Detong Capital, and Yuanhai Minghua and Su Gaoxin also participated in the investment, and received a total of 50 million yuan in credit from many banks. Among them, the famous investor Zhu Xiaohu is the director.
According to the official website, Wandianzhang has created an efficient operation system for chain enterprise operation and management, and provides retail stores with services such as smart patrol, face interaction, passenger flow statistics, member recognition, attendance and access control through AI and other technologies. According to Yoluoke’s official website, Yoluoke is an artificial intelligence service provider for new retail and new stores. It provides services for the marketing, patrolling and management of retail stores through facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and data comparative analysis.
In fact, “compared to recognition technologies for more complex scenes such as posture recognition and behavior trajectory recognition, face recognition is relatively simple, mainly static scenes, and the data is also richer.” AiAnalysis analyst Huang Yong pointed out. This also means that the technical threshold for face recognition is not so high.
The low technical threshold means that other companies are easy to enter. As a personal biometric face, it has actually become an important means of identity authentication for a person. A face corresponds to only one person. This uniqueness meets the needs of a large number of scenarios that require identity authentication, and also makes the face The identification application scenarios are very wide, and it is easy to realize the landing scenarios and commercial realization.
The technology is mature and can be put into commercial use immediately, no company is willing to give up this piece of cake. " Marketing is the third largest face recognition application scenario after the security and financial industry risk control ." Huang Yong pointed out. This also means that marketing solutions are very common in facial recognition companies.
In fact, some media have reported that many face recognition companies, in addition to security, automotive, identity verification and other solutions, also provide solutions for smart business, smart retail, and smart marketing. Even the AI Four Dragons (Shangtang Technology, Megvii Technology, Yuncong Technology, Yitu Technology) are more or less involved in this type of service. For example, Yuncong Technology shows on its official website that one of the four types of services currently involved is "smart business." Among them, Yuncong Technology said in the case of assisting the digital transformation of Changjiahui Shopping Park, helping to access 105 cameras on the platform, and helping customers to open up customer online and offline data islands, and precision marketing.
Yuncong Technology's official website shows a classic case in smart business
Moreover, Guangzheng Hundsun pointed out in a research report: “Face recognition has very strong requirements for the scene. Whether the product can meet the actual use requirements, the core is not only the algorithm itself, but also the deep cultivation of the scene.”
This also gives some small players opportunities. Enterprise service providers under the banner of "smart retail", such as the above-mentioned exposed Wandianzhang, etc., as well as marketing companies and advertising companies have begun to start the business of facial recognition algorithms. As long as face recognition is needed in offline scenario solutions, its business will more or less involve this technology. Together, these companies have contributed to the proliferation of face recognition technology in offline retail stores.
Once leaked, lifelong danger
Facial information is a unique biological characteristic of a person, and it has become the payment password, account password, etc. of many people. Since users cannot change their own facial information, once it is leaked, it will seriously threaten the user's property security and privacy.
There is nothing wrong with the reasonable pursuit of commercial interests by enterprises, but they must be within the boundaries of the law.
Kohler Sanitary Ware and Wandianzhang, the overall solution provider behind the CCTV’s 3.15 party, first collected facial information without the user’s knowledge, and had basic comparisons, such as identifying whether the user was How many times you entered the store, as to whether the face information was matched with the user's consumption information and personal information, or even sold to others, it is still unknown.
So, what laws and regulations have the companies that collect and use this information violated?
Zhu Wei, a researcher at the Communication Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, pointed out that the "Civil Code" stipulates that users' personal information includes biometric information, and face recognition is a typical biometric information. It is a typical behavior that violates the privacy and personal information rights of users without the consent of the user when they enter the store .
“In addition, people’s track and identification information are both core privacy and sensitive information. These rights and interests are specifically stipulated in criminal law. If a business collects a large amount of facial recognition information and then matches it, such as what’s the name, I have been to the store several times and reselling the information about how much money I have spent is a typical crime ." Zhu Wei told Shen Ran.
Li Sheng, a partner of Beijing Zhipu Law Firm, pointed out that by installing a face recognition camera to obtain citizens' personal information, as long as it exceeds the corresponding authorization and permission of the individual citizen, it can be deemed "illegal . " In this incident, the Kohler bathroom store obtained user information without authorization. At the same time, “after an enterprise illegally obtains a citizen’s personal information, if it sells or illegally provides it to others, if the circumstances are serious, it constitutes a crime of infringing on the citizen’s personal information, and it may be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention and a fine .”
These are clear violations of the law and violate the privacy and personal information rights of users. The leakage of facial information happened unknowingly, and we may not be able to pursue the responsibility.
First of all, there are many ways to leak facial recognition information, including our daily use of facial payment, access control, mobile phone applications, etc. From a technical point of view, facial information collection is very simple, as long as there is a camera, it can be continuously collection.
However, if the collected face information is only isolated information, the harm is actually not too great. But the fact is that there are always various risks of leakage of face information, such as database hacking, internal personnel reselling transaction data and so on.
"For our consumption records in various places, face recognition is used as an interface, and all information can be combined through points and faces, such as which store you have been to, how much you have consumed, what is the track of whereabouts, and what products are you for? What is your interest and contact information? The consequences of this are ranging from sending accurate advertisements, while the other is that people who are interested may "hit the library" behind the scenes. Connect your account information and face information, and our property security may be possible. There are great hidden dangers." Zhu Wei expressed concern.
The face recognition black industry chain is still spreading
In fact, in recent years, the reselling of face information on the Internet has formed a black industry chain.
As early as 2019, an AI face-changing software called ZAO became popular for a short time. The software only needs a photo to change the face of AI, make emoticons, and star in movie clips. This move has triggered heated discussions among the public on the issue of face safety. Just imagine that a photo can change the face. With this face, how many illegal things can be done by criminals, and how terrible the world will become. After the supervisory authority claimed that ZAO was suspected of infringement, the software was also removed from the shelves.
However, the chaos in the industry has been repeatedly banned. In July 2020, there were reports showing that cyber-criminal industry practitioners reselled illegally obtained facial information on e-commerce platforms. “Face data is 0.5 yuan per copy, and software is revised 35 yuan per set.” Many netizens stepped up and said Strong dissatisfaction: "My face is worth 50 cents?"
And Shen Ran found a person who reselled face information in some QQ groups, and bought a user's detailed identity information and face photo for 3 yuan. And the other party claimed that 888 yuan can teach the three-color face activation technology with a virtual video machine to brush the package.
In addition, black products that rely on facial information to make money are distributed on various platforms such as Taobao, Baidu Tieba, Zhihu, QQ, etc., buying and selling facial and ID information, and replacing facial recognition (that is, "activating" photos, Generate dynamic video, thus deceiving the face verification mechanism), a huge interest industry chain is intertwined in this chaotic market.
Some technical experts told Shenran that the face recognition black market can make the plane face photos obtained to simulate real people nodding, shaking their heads, blinking, talking, etc., and then use this information to register most of the software on the market with real names, thereby Help criminals handle online loans, implement precision fraud, etc.
Some media have reported that some scammers can post job information to carry out fraud after passing 58 City’s facial recognition, and some have passed real-name authentication through photo activation technology on some social platforms to carry out emotional fraud.
Once the matched face information is stolen, we have only one complete solution, which is to "change the face".
Shen Ran hereby reminds everyone to be cautious when dealing with websites and software that require swiping faces, swiping ID cards, and filling in detailed personal information. At the same time, try to avoid taking photos with ID cards and provide face and identity information at one time.
"Protecting face recognition information is not only protecting our face, but also protecting the personal information behind the face. The face itself is equivalent to a key. What is to be protected is the treasure house behind the key , so it is not too strict. "Zhu Wei pointed out.