Internet challenges are crazy things, from the past few weeks #CoupleChallenge is overrun all over the internet, where people are posting the pictures with their partners on social media. Similarly, thousands of teenagers began posting unflattering photos of themselves to their feeds with the cryptic caption “until tomorrow”. Anyone who liked the photos, which are intended to only stay up for 24 hours, received a message from the user daring them to do the same.
On one instance it seems like a normal challenge that everyone is enjoying but even a challenge like this has a dark side to it that you don’t know! Yes, this is internet, where things could easily get out of control if there is no one to control it. But how is such a thing possible?
Internet Challenges – Background Story!
Couple challenge was first started on Tik Tok and now its popularity has reached to an extent where even celebrities have started taking parts. When the world was facing COVID19 pandemic (& is still facing) the internet challenge came as a stress buster. Couple challenge was something where couples posted videos with blindfolds on or with their eyes closed and in that particular video, they would answer some personal questions like – “Who proposed first?” by pointing their fingers towards the person. Nowadays, this challenge has changed and people now only upload pictures with their partners with the hashtags.
Similarly, there were many other challenges which you would have seen in past like #10YearChallenge where people posted photos and videos of 10 years earlier comparing themselves with their present ones. Before that we had the very famous #IceBucketChallenge which was done for charity.
What’s wrong with these Challenges?
These internet challenges are not harmful, but you should be careful when such challenges encourage people to upload their personal photos and videos with a common hashtag. Because, your personal data i.e. photos & videos are like Gold Mine for the bad people on the internet who make use of them for their own personal gain or misuse them.
Confused, check the below tweet by Pune Police. Police mentioned to think twice before you post a picture with your partners as a part of ‘Couple Challenge’ because these pictures can be used for cyber-crimes.
Think twice before you post a picture with your partner. A 'cute' challenge can go wrong if not cautious! #BeAware pic.twitter.com/oJkuYdlBWZ
— PUNE POLICE (@PuneCityPolice) September 24, 2020
Usually, in normal conditions to find data on someone using internet is a ‘pretty tough’ thing, but once a person start a popular challenge with a hashtag and make it viral, finding a data of the target using the hashtag easier. Once enough media content about the target is gathered, that particular content is then used for crimes such as – Creating morphed photos or videos or using those photos and morphing it on pornographic content. The same data can be even utilized to create Deep Fakes.
Dangers in Future!
Apple brought ‘Facial recognition’ to the mainstream with iPhone X and Face ID and everybody followed the ‘Same trend’, but you know what? these technologies are ‘Not perfect’, however challenges like 10year challenge and Couple challenge make these technologies perfect.
How? well take an example of 10 Year challenge, where we compare ourselves with our 10year old pic. By uploading such post under #10YearChallenge you’re giving these social media companies your facial data from a decade ago, some people are even uploading their childhood pics under this challenge.
So, a challenge like this is adding more fuel to the fire i.e. already these companies are taking your data to make their product smarter, now challenges like these will give them more data (including the data they don’t have such as your childhood pictures) and these companies can make their technology even more perfect.
The bright side is, in future the same ‘Facial recognition’ technology can be used to stop criminals, however as every coin has two sides so even this same technology that is used for the betterment of the society can be used against that society itself.
Hence think twice before uploading anything on internet and don’t encourage challenges that makes people share their personal moments under cute ‘Hashtags’.
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