I have listened to Digital Planet for many years and have even been for a drink with the presenters at a live show. It is a programme on the BBC World Service that covers technology from all over the globe. I often hear stories I would not have encountered elsewhere. On last week's show I learned about a service called Pimeyes.
This site will search the internet for images matching a face you supply. There intention is that you use it to see where images of you have been used, but there is nothing to stop you looking for anyone you have a photo of.
I let the site use my webcam to take a picture and it quickly came up with a series of images that are definitely me. That is a pretty good hit rate, so their machine learning algorithms seem to be good.
It only shows you part of each URL and you have to pay to get the full details. Some are from Steem/Hive, but I am not sure about some of the others.
It found some 'lower score results' of which only two are me, but getting a different view of my head is clever. My glasses are quite distinctive and it may have picked up on them.
Premium access ranges from $30 to $300 per month. I am not sure what a business use for this might be. Would it be used to vet job applicants or to track criminals? The radio programme mentioned stalking and that could be possible. They said something about it not looking into social sites, but Hive does not seem to be on their list. This article has more details.
The company started off in Poland, but are now registed in the Seychelles.
It is obvious that this sort of technology is improving all the time. I am sure intelligence services have their own versions to track people. This could be used with surveillance camera that are everywhere these days. It is scary, but is something we have to take account of in our lives now. The genie cannot be put pack into the bottle.