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The social media platform formerly known as Twitter can now collect your biometric data and DNA.
A new update quietly added to the platform’s privacy policy says that X is now allowed to collect fingerprints, retina scans, voice and face recognition, and keystroke patterns from its users.
The update would mean that anyone who uses fingerprint verification to log into the app from their phone, post selfies or videos to the platform, or speak their mind in X ‘spaces’ would be able to see their unique biometric data cataloged by the company.
The new policy, which describes its interest in user biometrics as “for security and identification purposes,” it also added the platform’s intent to collect data on users’ employment history, educational background, and “job search activity.”
The move follows nearly a year of turmoil for the microblogging app, which included Musk asking its users to pay subscription fees for premium services and verification — part of his broader plan to recover from dwindling ad revenue. .
A new privacy policy update from Twitter (now ‘X’) says the platform is allowed to collect ‘biometric’ data from its users.
A new update (left) to Twitter’s (now ‘X’) privacy policy says the platform is allowed to collect ‘biometric’ data from its users, a broad category that includes everything from fingerprints and retina scans to voice recognition and keystroke patterns. and even DNA. The previous policy is shown on the right.
For more than a decade, big tech companies have stoked controversy and worried privacy advocates with their persistent interest in collecting their customers’ biometric data.
Chinese viral video sensation TikTok, for example, delivered permission to collect users’ ‘voice and facial prints’ with a privacy policy update in 2021.
And this summer, Facebook’s parent company, Meta announced its intention to finally discontinue its facial recognition systemwhich had been automatically identifying users, as well as their friends and family, in photos for more than a decade.
Meta’s vice president of AI research, Jerome Pesenti, said the move was a response to “many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society.”
While it’s unclear what Musk or X intend to do with users’ biometric data, Musk has expressed a desire to remove inauthentic accounts and bots from the site since he bought the company last year.
In a move that could offer a hint at Musk’s future plans to mine and profit from users’ biometric data, the billionaire announced, via a post on X, that users will soon be able to make video and audio calls. through X itself.
Following the privacy policy update, Musk announced that X users will be able to make video and audio calls through the platform without having to share their phone number.
For more than a decade, big tech companies have stoked controversy with their persistent interest in collecting biometric data from customers. Chinese viral video sensation TikTok, for example, gave itself permission to collect users’ ‘face and voice fingerprints’ with a 2021 privacy policy update.
“You don’t need a phone number,” Musk said, following up on previous comments that the platform would allow users to protect their phone number from parties on the other end of the call. ‘X is the effective global address book.’
Pending litigation could be another factor influencing company privacy policy updates.
A class action lawsuitfiled in Cook County, Illinois, on July 11 of this year, charged X (“X Corp.”) with miscapturing, storing, and using the biometric data of Illinois residents without their consent.
Musk’s company, according to the complaint, “has failed to adequately inform people who have interacted (knowingly or unknowingly) with Twitter, which collects and/or stores their biometric identifiers in every photograph containing a face that is uploaded.”
The case is based on the platform’s license and use of Microsoft’s PhotoDNA software since approximately 2015 to control pornographic and other unsafe-for-work images posted on Twitter and now X.
The class action lawsuit seeks $5,000 for any and all reckless violations of BIPA. [Illinois state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act]’ as well as a court order requiring X to store users’ biometric data in accordance with the laws of the state of Illinois.