Privacy Guides

This is also how we stop our biggest abusers of our service. They leave such a unique fingerprint from all our other customers, we just quietly shadowban them.

It doesn’t need to be as dramatic as this. The goal is simply to obscure key parts of the face that are commonly used for individualization. Between the eyebrows, the bridge of the nose, jawline, eye tilt, etc are all common key data points that facial recognition systems use to differentiate between similar faces. You can also try to avoid facial detection from pinging you in the first place, by obscuring the expected oval head shape. Style your hair asymmetrically, have bangs that droop over one eye, break up the expected round shape, use a color that mismatches your skintone, etc…

Your face paint is definitely an extreme example of the latter. But the important part is that some may actually still be able to detect a face (even if it can’t positively identify them) because they didn’t do anything to obscure the head shape or obscure at least one of their eyes.

And that's how I got kicked out of the local trader joes...

In what direction are you moving in? I can't tell!

Idk if regular sunglasses will prevent your face from being captured by facial recognition systems.

Oh yeah, We're looking for that idiot in the stupid sunglasses, a tinfoil hat, and a fedora.

That's not how they work. They're highly reflective, so they block analog cameras, and they're infrared blocking, so they stop auto focus.

But if majority wear this to prevent facial recognition, they won't be standing out anymore.

Okay. Who's doing the PDF deep dive and letting us know how this works in TL;DR format?

Typical Europe

Or maybe attending a protest in China?

Maybe you just want to look sick at the next rave.

Not their intended purpose, but that's the only one that doesn't sound stupid

Edit: looking at their website, that might be their intended target audience.

I’m not an expert in security cameras, but don’t they only use IR at night?

Precisely. And good security cameras with Sony sensors only need IR when it's pitch black. During dawn, dusk and summer nights at Nordic latitudes they don't even switch to night mode, showing sharp full-color image almost 24/7—watching that footage you wouldn't even realize that it's taken in natural light with sun below the horizon.

And facial recognition is a standard feature these days. It's become so good that you can have two pictures of the same person, one taken at age 15 and the other at age 95, and it can still say with >95% confidence that it's the same person. And that's the prosumer-level stuff available to every Jack and Joe to install to their small business or suburban house. I don't even want to think about what the alphabet soup orgs could have access to.

I have some experience with Dahua cameras and NVR-s. Their technical capabilities are both amazing and scary at the same time.

Dunno what those cost, but a pair of IR blocking safety glasses are like 15 bucks or less, blend in a whole lot better, and won't make you stand out like a shining beacon in video.