(Yicai Global) Oct. 28 -- Over one thousand of human facial photos are available for just CNY2 (USD0.30) on some online trading platforms, China Central Television 2 reported yesterday. Security risks lurks in it as lawbreakers may use this information to make unauthorized payments and access devices.

These photos sold online are all from real life, selfies and other images full of private personal data.

Some criminal suspects pre-process illegally obtained photos and reproduce them into dynamic videos by using artificial intelligence face-changing technology to cheat face verification mechanisms and commit crimes, per the report.

Masks can also replace real human faces to unlock smartphones, researchers have found, and three-dimensional printing technology can produce face masks or headgear with reasonable accuracy at low cost, experts said. As long as a background is not very dark or very bright, masks have a 30 percent chance of fooling facial recognition mechanisms.

The simplest face recognition format requires only six or eight feature points, with dozens or even hundreds of these required for sophisticated ones, experts said. In vivo detection techniques targeting biometric pairs have been developed to recognize the vital signs of scanned objects, reducing the risk of a photo or mask being mis-identified as a human face by the system.

Stricter standards and specifications should be formulated for human facial data storage, experts suggested. The collection, use and storage of such data by technology developers and app operators should also be subject to harsher regulation.

Editor: Ben Armour