Since 70s personal data, privacy protection is a subject of law.

However until now it was difficult to convince everyone with an easy answer that personal data protection is mandatory to protect humans.

Now your data can be used against you in a brand new identity impersonation.

First was the fun.

It starts as a funny technology based on machine learning called "face swap". With it, everyone can take videos, pictures within swapping faces is done. We knew already that personal data like interests, behaviors were the new gold of our age. Then we discovered that our objects could use our personal data in an uncontrolled manner with the "Alexa Dollhouse" unexpected and uncontrolled massive buying due to machine learning enhancement of our daily buy acts. Here start our surprise on those technologies and our capabilities to keep control of our own digital life. Then we had a new funny app "Zao" in which you can impersonate Leonardo Dicaprio by you in his famous movies scenes.

Here start straight impact for everyone.

At the same moment of Zao App Buzz, cyber-attackers impersonated the voice of a CEO to give order to transfer of €220,000 (approx. $243,000) to the bank account of a Hungarian supplier.

Last year at Blackhat a talk about how deepfake could threat current trust methods was held.

"Imagine if a deep-fake video is created of a politician speaking utter rubbish or passing obscene comments just before voting day, and then this video is circulated and uploaded to social media," Thaware said.

The Cambridge Analytica was a company dedicated to influence population to push public opinion in flavor of their customers.

Researchers demonstrates that machine learning can generate realistic fingerprint from pictures of fingers. Those technologies are now public spread through Open Source licenses and become to be easier to use.

The creator of Zao App explained that we will be able to make realistic deepfakes in a year. Which impact all biometric recognition systems like Face ID, Voice Recognition, Bank Identification, Driving License, Social Number, ...

Soon with enough amount of pictures, written text, videos of a person, we will be able to generate a CyberClone of someone which look, speak, behave and answer like the real person could do.

On phone, Teams, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Telegram, FaceTime, Twitter, Reddit, Linkedin, how could you make the difference between a CyberClone and the real one?

Defend yourself or you'll have to find a company to own your data.

Google start a program to fight against deepfake it will become a race for more data and computational capability.

The first step is to learn the deepfake but the next one will be a deeper learning of real data from the machine learning systems to make the difference by the accuracy level.

So the question is how to protect yourself and those close to you to be impersonated on internet in a video having outrageous situation and not able to find a job. Or find your bank account empty next to a transfer ordered by you ?

The answer is not simple and will probably move with the evolution of those technologies here my first hints.

Reduce your exposure

Face recognition mask

There are several project of mask to avoid face recognition and people still recognisable for humans.

Don't show your fingerprint on video and pictures

Content alteration

If machine learning can be used to impersonate your identity it can be used also to protect yourself by altering your voice, videos, pictures to trick systems that learn your identity.

Don't publish content on the youngest

We all knows now that what you publish on internet can persist permanently, until now it was used to investigate on you for a potential job, for political or social purpose or harassment. Now the machine learning is a game changer on the threat and raise of CyberClones is incoming. More you will publish information of children during your growth more realistic will become the CyberClone.

Encrypt your data to share only with people in your trust circle

End to end (user to user) encryption are already embedded by default in some instant-messaging app.

You can encrypt files , or content in web browser with open source tools like Webpg or Gpg.

It avoid central system to be able to learn from your data even if your share or upload through them.

Certify your contents to make the proof

Sign real contents

You can use the same tool to encrypt and sign your contents.

Blockchain stamping

Sign your contents with blockchain is an interesting way to explore as some blockchains are public and can be used to verify your content widely over internet.

Now you can say "Your data is your threat!" to anyone that has "nothing to hide".



