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If you’ve flown in the past few years you’ve likely had a TSA agent ask you to look into a camera. You’re probably aware that the agent was asking so that your features could be scanned by a facial recognition system to verify your identity. But that might not have been the only place your face was scanned recently. Been to a ballgame or concert, or shopped at a supermarket? You might have had your face scanned there, too, even if you didn’t knowingly pass in front of a camera.
Such episodes raise concerns about government tracking and corporate invasions of privacy, but they also pose a less discussed risk: Those scans create biometric data tied to your identity, and that data can be stolen. And while you can reset your passwords if they’re swiped in a data breach, you can’t reset your face.
Rochester Institute of Technology cybersecurity professor Jonathan Weissman explains how facial recognition systems generate biometric data, how that data can be – and has been – stolen, and what cyber criminals could do with the information, especially if it’s combined with other data about you.
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When you’re out and about, your face isn’t just visible − it’s captured.
John Keeble/Getty Images
Jonathan S. Weissman, Rochester Institute of Technology
You can change a stolen password or credit card, but you can’t reset your face when your biometric data is breached.
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Health + Medicine
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Katrine L. Wallace, University of Illinois Chicago
The US military helped create the first flu vaccine to keep service members in action – and the logic for requiring vaccination has not changed.
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Liao Yue, University of Texas at Arlington
Tracking glucose numbers in real time is an increasingly popular wellness trend, but monitoring a constant stream of data can lead to confusion and needless anxiety.
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Olamide Asifat, Georgia Southern University
Research shows that social isolation plays a major role in quality of life and risk of death in people with COPD.
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Education
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Brittany Adams, University of Alabama; Elias Blinkoff, Temple University; Karyn Allee, Mercer University; Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University
While these Southern states made some gains in reading, they weren’t evenly felt across different student populations.
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