volteFace - Anonymize Photos
Introduction
Prefer not to post your photos to social media, and photo sharing sites? A good example is LinkedIn. It’s almost a must, to establish confidence with industry colleagues, along with helping them to recognize who you are.
However, unlike your social security number, credit card, or written signature, the way you look physically is something that is extremely difficult to change. Your photograph is a highly unique biometric signature of who you are.
We advise that you protect it!
While you might intend for your shared photos to be viewed and appreciated by people - your family, friends, & colleagues, increasingly what you post online is being appreciated by more than just people.
Governments and the private sector across the globe are actively engaged in collecting & amassing photos, especially publicly available ones from various established sources on the Internet, to build better machine-based facial recognition systems.
While many of these systems have honorable causes, unfortunately there are very few effective laws & controls that govern how individuals' photos are collected, amassed, and protected. This means that your photos can also be used for nefarious purposes, further eroding your privacy.
What is volteFace?
volteFace helps you protect your privacy and identity by targeting and anonymizing key facial landmarks in your photos, making them resistant to machine-based facial recognition, while still allowing others to view and appreciate them as originally intended.
Your photos are modified sufficiently enough to subvert the dependencies of machine-based facial recognition systems, rendering them useless to governments and organizations, and preventing your photos from being used to further erode your personal privacy.
Before and After Anonymizing
Features
- Anonymize Photos from Machines and People - volteFace makes the changes necessary to make your photos resistant to machine-based facial recognition. You can also optionally anonymize entire faces in photos, making them resistant to recognition by both machines and people.
- Anonymize Many Photos at Once - Since it's likely that you have amassed a lot of photos on your phone, volteFace is designed to conveniently anonymize large numbers of photos at once. Simply select the photos you need to anonymize and let it do all the work!
- Apply Touch Ups After Anonymizing - volteFace also allows you to put the finishing touches on anonymized photos, before you share them. For instance, you can anonymize signs and landmarks in the background of a photo.
- Remove Personal Information from Photos - volteFace also comprehensively detects and removes deep metadata embedded into photos which can contain personally identifying information, such as your physical GPS location when a photo was taken, the details about your phone and camera, and other vendor-specific information.
Examples
- Protect your Photo on Professional Networking Sites - Having a profile photo on professional networking sites allows people to better identify you, build familiarity with your colleagues, and increase your career prospects. volteFace allows you to continue to post your anonymized photo on these sites, without having to worry about it being used in ways that you didn't originally intend.
- Protect Photos Shared with Friends & Family - Posting photos to social media, photo sharing sites, and file storage sites is a great way to conveniently share special events with others. volteFace allows you to continue do this, while respecting the anonymity of the people in your photos.
Getting Started
You'll need an iPhone to use volteFace with iOS version 11 or higher.
To get started using volteFace to protect your photos, click here for an overview of the main features.
FAQ
For frequently asked questions regarding volteFace, please refer to our FAQ.
Terms
For an explanation of terms used in volteFace, please refer to the terminology guide.