30 comments

  • xnx 1 hour ago
    If there were a Doomsday Clock for how close we are to "please drink verification can" (https://files.catbox.moe/eqg0b2.png), scientists would now move it to 3 minutes to midnight.
  • trollbridge 1 hour ago

      Your Google Account holds a lot of valuable information, from cherished photos to important emails and documents.
    
    Stuff like this is why I and many other people are going out of our way to make this no longer the case.
    • zzyzxd 43 minutes ago
      It's funny because different people would interpret this sentence differently.

      If you have high level understanding of the tech behind it, this feels like a threat. But if you don't, this sounds like an honest message from someone who genuinely wants to protect you.

      A regular user log into Google account and see their photos today. Tomorrow they log in and see the photos again. And they would assume this system will always work like this.

    • dingaling 1 hour ago
      "Be a shame if you couldn't access them any more...

      Verify identity to continue"

    • tintor 1 hour ago
      Moved all of my cherished photos out of my Google Account.
  • pzxc 1 hour ago
  • Cider9986 1 hour ago
    >If you've violated a Google policy, we may save your selfie video for a longer period of time to enforce our policies.
  • newswangerd 4 minutes ago
    I had to double check that today isn’t April 1st
  • iosjunkie 1 hour ago
    I would love to know how they are going to handle deepfakes.

    Also, doesn't this give law enforcement an easier avenue to compel access to someone's accounts?

    • EmbarrassedHelp 34 minutes ago
      > Also, doesn't this give law enforcement an easier avenue to compel access to someone's accounts?

      It does.

  • pudgywalsh 2 hours ago
    I'm waiting for the new killer feature where "Sign In With Google" popup overlay dialogs go away forever and never come back.
    • cadamsdotcom 5 minutes ago
      Ironically it was DuckDuckGo's AI that gave me the magic string for uBlock origin:

      accounts.google.com/gsi/*

      Put that in your config and enjoy.

    • netsharc 1 hour ago
      Fucking hell, they modified Chrome/ium to pop up an application dialog (it's not just somr HTML inside the web page) to "log-in using Google".. fuck Google!

      Maybe next they'll get Chrome to automatically turn on your webcam, capture your face and say "Thanks for logging in!"

      • ThePowerOfFuet 1 hour ago
        So don't use Chrome/Chromium. The web is so much better with uBlock Origin anyway!!
        • netsharc 29 minutes ago
          I use Vivaldi, sadly it's based on Chromium and has quite a bit of the stinky parts...

          (Currently on an old Vivaldi version that still allows manifest v2.. I guess I'm asking to be pwned)

    • ButlerianJihad 1 hour ago
      Guess what, there are browser settings for that!
      • ThePowerOfFuet 1 hour ago
        Not in Firefox there isn't. It's part of the website.
        • sgc 3 minutes ago
          I use a 30-seconds-of-work horribly-hacked Stylus setting to make it a blue dot that can expand on hover:

          @-moz-document regexp(".") { / Insert code here... */ #credential_picker_container { width: fit-content !important; height: fit-content !important; } iframe[src^="https://accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe/select"] { width: 10px !important; height: 10px !important; border-radius: 50% !important; background-color:blue !important; } iframe[src^="https://accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe/select"]:hover { width: 300px !important; height: 300px !important; border-radius: 0 !important; } }

  • muppetman 1 hour ago
    Google already have 5,000 odd photos of me anyway in Google photos. I'm screwed either way.
    • canada_dry 32 minutes ago
      Plus friends and family inadvertently give Google/Facebook (etc) your personal info via tagged photos, contacts, DMs without your consent and they gather/link/sell this collateral info to the highest bidder without anyone being the wiser.
    • wegwerf17377382 27 minutes ago
      That attitude is exactly what got you into that mess.

      There's no reason to believe the mess couldn't get any deeper, so backing out now doesn't have to be useless.

      • muppetman 3 minutes ago
        Of course. I wish that Immich had existed when I started using Google Photos, but it didn't. And I'd just had my first child so I really wanted to ensure I didn't lose any memories. These days I run the two in parallel.
  • tiffanyh 26 minutes ago
    Is this basically “Video KYC” as required in some countries to open a bank account?
  • andunie 1 hour ago
    The fact that most people will love this is depressing.
    • m463 1 hour ago
      I wonder. I know a lot of people who hate this kind of thing, but because they don't want to be "tinfoil hat oddballs" they just keep quiet.

      I think it would be nice to applaud or support people who think this way.

      Instead of ridiculing these folks, or using semi-apologist "you're not the target market" type comments, it would be nice to say "good for you" or support them in some other way.

  • srameshc 32 minutes ago
    Sounds like a bad idea on so many layers. I don't want to give more selfies for training, feels like a disaster about to happen
  • angoragoats 6 minutes ago
    I am surprised and encouraged by the fact that almost all of the comments here are negative!

    I would absolutely delete/abandon my Google account before voluntarily giving them my facial data.

  • arm32 2 hours ago
    Respectfully, John and Claire, what do they have you guys doing? Please blink twice in your selfies if you're okay.
  • thisislife2 2 hours ago
    That's Google in a nutshell - "the more personal data you give us, the more access you can have to Google services".
  • LorenDB 1 hour ago
    Certainly this will never go wrong in any possible way.
  • fhn 2 hours ago
    Next on Google's list, blood draw for sign-in.
    • cousinbryce 2 hours ago
      I’d be willing to provide a stool sample
  • schaefer 34 minutes ago
    If only they wouldn't be evil... ugh.
  • nicce 47 minutes ago
    I thought it is already April Fools for a while...
  • charcircuit 1 hour ago
    This already exists and is called FaceID and doesn't have the same privacy risks since the face check is done locally to allow the user to use the passkey to authenticate.

    >Your selfie video is encrypted at rest

    All data nowadays is encrypted at rest. That doesn't really matter since someone stealing a hard drive from Google with your information on it will never happen. The more likely risk is Google decrypts it and then sends it somewhere it shouldn't go and potentially trained into some AI system.

  • gitowiec 1 hour ago
    I happily will provide my selfie with one brown eye and round pale face
  • praet 2 hours ago
    April fools?
    • fhn 2 hours ago
      Not for google. They'll want your family member photos next
      • FireInsight 1 hour ago
        They already have them, on Google Photos.
  • leet-stick-7299 4 minutes ago
    Thats gona go well in history.
  • superkuh 1 hour ago
    Meanwhile google has been locking out and closing the gmail accounts of people, myself included, that signed up before a phone number was required. If you don't log into your account for ~a year or so they will lock it and demand you log in. Which you can do, and you can even input the 2FA code, but it still won't let you log in because it says "there's not enough information to prove this is your account" despite having all the information ever associated with it. The only way to prevent deletion is to add a completely new, never before there phone number. I couldn't do that so they deleted mine saying I never logged in despite logging in literally dozens of times.
    • pessimizer 49 minutes ago
      > The only way to prevent deletion is to add a completely new, never before there phone number.

      Just happened to me. They "confirmed" it was me by getting a phone number they'd never seen before, that didn't belong to the false name on the account, and that I'd refused to give them for like 20 years. If anything, the fact that I eventually agreed to give them a phone number under duress was evidence that it wasn't me.

      > despite logging in literally dozens of times.

      Despite logging in literally thousands of times. I went in and deleted almost everything. Email now considered harmful. I'll feel better once they're locking me out of an empty account.

      The problem is that everything in life requires a persistent email address, and hates email addresses that aren't on a whitelisted domain. The choice is between having some major provider, or not being able to pay your taxes online or log into your health insurance website. The fence is closing.

  • ProfessorLayton 1 hour ago
    This seems like a terrible idea because deepfakes are getting better and better, even with them mentioning them and handwaving concerns away.
  • guessmyname 1 hour ago
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  • moritzwarhier 2 hours ago
    This sounds... totally normal.

    Emphasis on "totally".

    But I guess Google coming out with a cloud-based FaceID clone was just a matter of time...

    apart from using just a vastly larger amount of 2D photos and more precise PI techniques, instead of that stupid local-only, small-AI-based, 3D-scanning technique that falls back to passwords...

    eh, I prefer Apple as my good cop ever since I can afford Apple devices

    • Cider9986 1 hour ago
      Face ID is private on device. This is stored by Google and they will keep it longer if you "violate their policies".
  • ikiris 36 minutes ago
    Wow this is a terrible idea. I used to really respect the security and identity team what happened?
  • kotaKat 1 hour ago
    I'm surprised how fast this came from the whole "give us your hand" bullshit with reCaptcha not being that long ago.

    https://docs.cloud.google.com/recaptcha/docs/hand-gesture-ve...

    "Google analyzes one or more videos of a user's hand as they perform various actions or gestures. The video is processed to extract hand landmark data, which includes 21 hand-knuckle coordinates."

  • Qision 46 minutes ago
    Next step is to require the full transcript of your genome!

    /s