New digital eraser software deletes embarrassing Facebook photos after a set period of time
Remember that time when you drank too many tequila slammers and pretended to be a bouncer at the bar - feeling everyone up and ending up nearly being arrested - only for the photos of your shame ending up on Facebook the next day?
No? Maybe that's just me then. Well for all us who seem unable not to be snapped during our most embarrassing moments of madness there is now a useful program that ensures that these photos will eventually be taken off social network sites.
German researchers have created a piece of software called X-Pire that gives images an expiration date by tagging them with an encrypted key.
Once this date has passed the key stops the images being viewed and copied.
"More and more people are publishing private data to the internet and it's clear that some things can go wrong if it stays there too long," said Professor Michael Backes of the Information Security and Cryptography department at Saarland University, who led development of X-Pire.
How X-Pire works
X-Pire creates encrypted copies of images and asks those uploading them to give each one an expiration date.
Viewing these images requires the free X-Pire browser add-on, but currently only a version that works with Firefox is available. Those without the viewer will be unable to see any protected image.
When the viewer encounters an encrypted image it sends off a request for a key to unlock it. This key will only be sent, and the image become viewable, if the expiration date has not been passed.
Images given an expiration date with X-Pire have been successfully uploaded to Flickr, Facebook and many other websites, said Prof Backes.
This testing was essential because the different ways that sites treat uploaded images added lots of complications.
"Facebook, for instance, does a huge amount of post-processing and whatever protection you deploy has to cope with that treatment," he said.
The X-Pire program should be available in late January and will cost 2 euros (£1.68) a month. Those who stop paying will not see their images suddenly become viewable, he said, instead they will just not be able to put expiration dates on new images.
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- groups:
- Tech, Technology
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- tags:
- Photography, Facebook, Twitter, Internet Security
