Russian FindFace app is the new privacy threat TheINQUIRER

AN ALARMING app that can scan a person's face and identify who they are and what they are into has become very popular in Russia. This is the opposite of great, and represents a threat to privacy that has staggered even The Guardian newspaper, which has reported that the FindFace app is very accurate and can even be used to recognise whole crowds. It is the sort of thing that we might have expected to report alongside words like'Snowden' and'National Security Agency', but actually it's a consumer thing that draws on Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, to match mugs with, well, mugs. "In the short time since the launch, FindFace has amassed 500,000 users and processed nearly three million searches," said a report in The Guardian. "Some have sounded the alarm about the potentially disturbing implications. Already the app has been used by a St Petersburg photographer to snap and identify people on the city's metro, as well as by online vigilantes to uncover the social media profiles of female porn actors and harass them."