Face detection depends on computer vision algorithms which have been trained to recognize certain features of a face and their spatial relationship to one another. These include eyes, nose, mouth, chin, hairline, ears, cheekbones and more. When it finds these, the algorithms have found your face.
The first step in disrupting automatic recognition of your face is to make it difficult to automatically find your face! That means, making your face not like a face. Some animals do this naturally.
What DOES work:
- Break up the symmetry of your face with hair style, hair color, and make-up.
Some call this "personal camouflage". Click on the picture to enlarge.
(see: CV Dazzle)- Think CONTRAST, that is, black and white. Face detection and recognition is done without color. Make-up should be applied in patterns on each side of the face with high contrast differences. See the example at right.
- Try COUNTERSHADING. This means making dark areas light and light areas dark. Essentially, you "paint out" the portions of your face that are in shadow and vice versa. Animals use countershading as part of their natural camouflage.
- Avoid ENHANCERS. Do you really want to make your eyes and mouth more visible? No you don't. Less is more.
- Disrupt the T-ZONE. This is the area between your eyes to tip of your nose. Use a hairstyle that hangs over this area. Use make-up to hide contours. This part of your face is normally pretty light, so make it darker. The same goes for cheekbones.
- Wear a hoodie! Sometimes this makes fashion sense, other times it doesn't
- Wear a veil. This might be only partially effective if your eyes and other features are sill visible.
- Wear a burka. This works but is unlikely to make fashion sense in many parts of the world.
- Wear camera-disruptive technology such as near-infrared LEDs.
- Grow a beard; even better, grow a beard and trim it asymmetrically.
What you CAN'T DO or DOESN''T WORK:
- Ignore accessories
- For example, sugnlasses. While they may hide your eyes, they do nothing to disrupt the symmetry of your face. Furthermore, most robust algorithms for face detection have been trained to ignore known types of occlusions (things that hide features, e.g., glasses, hats)
- Wear a mask. Although this obviously works, it is also illegal in some areas (e.g., New York city). Plus masks are very hot.
LINKS
CV Dazzle: Camouflage from Computer Vision
How to use camouflage to thwart facial recognition