Facebook Images To Get Expiration Date 306
Pickens writes "BBC reports that researchers have created software that gives images an expiration date by tagging them with an encrypted key so that once this date has passed the key stops the images being viewed and copied. Professor Michael Backes, who led development of the X-Pire system, says development work began about 18 months ago as potentially risky patterns of activity on social networks, such as Facebook, showed a pressing need for such a system. 'More and more people are publishing private data to the internet and it's clear that some things can go wrong if it stays there too long,' says Backes. The X-Pire software creates encrypted copies of images and asks those uploading them to give each one an expiration date. Viewing these images requires the free X-Pire browser add-on. When the viewer encounters an encrypted image it sends off a request for a key to unlock it. This key will only be sent, and the image become viewable, if the expiration date has not been passed."
Debunked (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot users debunk this scheme as stupid in 5... 4... 3...
Until... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cracked! (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't quite figure out how they'll stop me from taking a screenshot of the encrypted image.
no pictures for linux users... (Score:5, Insightful)
because you can't lock the print screen out, right?
I wish Facebook would expire (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cracked! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not useless, and it's not perfect. Not a terrible idea though.
Re:Debunked (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yes, and your friends will not be able to see your pictures unless they download a plugin ("huh...what's that??"), and possibly use a specific browser ("huh? why?").
So yeah, pretty stupid overall. This is another sad attempt at a form of DRM.
X-Pire-copy-to-imgur browser add-on (Score:5, Insightful)
Which will result in something like the "X-Pire-copy-to-imgur browser add-on" which automatically decrypts the image and then posts a decrypted copy to imgur or whatever sharing site you want to use.
Not to mention all the large companies trolling facebook for photos and storing them for later use to provide background check style services/etc.
Once you post it, a copy has been made, once someone views it, a copy has been made. Those copies are outside your control. Even if you encrypt it, once someone views it, an unencrypted copy has been made, and it's once more out of your control.
Re:Debunked (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Debunked (Score:1, Insightful)
*facepalm* (Score:4, Insightful)
*facepalm*
This whole concept should be on The Daily WTF.
Re:Until... (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, it can be solved just as easily if Facebook would:
More importantly, it fails because:
The decision about how long I should be tagged in a photo must be my decision, not the decision of the person who posts the photo. Any scheme that does not achieve this goal is completely missing the point.
Un-X-Pire (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, I bet mine takes a lot less time to code than theirs.
Re:Debunked (Score:4, Insightful)
My thought exactly. They needed 18 months to develop this and didn't even come up with the fact that their solution is significantly inferior to the most obvious solution?
So close... :)
Deleting the image from Facebook is forever, if you trust Facebook. If you don't trust Facebook, then you might as well assume they are using a scripting tool to crank through the encrypted images as soon as they are posted and taking an unencrypted copy for themselves.
This allows easy copying until the image is expired, and in a week there'll be a deXPire on every Linux repository that will ensure easy copying after the image is expired. Deleting the image makes it unavailable for everyone who hasn't already made a copy. "X-Piring" the image makes it and all other "expired" images available to anyone who wants to go to the trouble of "apt-get install deXPire-mozilla-plugin".
Re:Until... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Until... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this misses the point somewhat. Don't we all hate DRM because those schemes are a real bitch for data portability and long term archives? Which is it, then?
The reason you put a timed kill switch on an archive is not because people in the present will use it in ways you dislike -- if that were true, why create or share it at all? The point is rather to piss off and disrupt the people in the far future who are post-facto digging through archives on you. Internet research hinges on how easy it is to find things. This would probably make it harder to find things that have expired.
Security exists in an ecosystem. Everything can be broken. But the only questions that matters is will it actually happen most of the time?
NEWS! Slashdot Title Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)