That's the warning from a team of cybersecurity experts: it's best to avoid waving your two fingers to form the ‘V’ of victory in your photos. It's not especially a question of style, but rather of the security of your personal data. Indeed, this simple gesture can reveal a great deal about your identity to the trained eye.
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Thanks to advances in technology and photography, simply zooming in on a high-definition photo of your fingertips could allowcybercriminals to retrieve your fingerprints... and thus potentially usurp your identity, since each person has unique fingerprints.
Identity theft and data security
According to experts, the complete fingerprints can be reconstructed when the photo was taken from within 5 feet of the person photographed. If the photo was captured from 10 feet away, it is still possible to recover 50% of the prints.
This data can, therefore, be extremely useful for anyone pretending to be you: since a large number of protection systems are based on fingerprint recognition, starting with your smartphone, it is very easy to unlock them.
One obstacle remains: the cybercriminal must still have physical access to the digital recognition sensor. But there is no doubt that it is only a matter of time, and that technology will soon make up for this lack by giving cybercriminals the opportunity to find a countermeasure.
