Daily Safeguarding Update

Legality of collecting faces online challenged

Clearview AI, a US firm with a database of three billion facial images from the internet, is facing a new legal challenge from privacy campaigners.
Privacy International and others argue its methods of collecting photos and selling them to private firms and the police “go beyond what we could ever expect as online users”.
Clearview has said it has no contracts with any EU-based customers.
It said it had complied with requests to remove images of EU citizens.
Under GDPR rules, European citizens can ask the company if their faces are in its database and request that their biometric data is no longer included in searches.
Five such requests were submitted by privacy campaigners.
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Twitter has listed a new subscription service on app stores, in an indication that the social media giant is preparing to trial the offering soon.
“Twitter Blue” is listed as an in-app purchase, priced at £2.49 in the UK and $2.99 in the US.
Twitter has given no further details, and declined to confirm online claims that the service could allow users to “undo” tweets.
It previously said it was working on special features for paid subscribers
The firm wouldn’t comment directly on the listing but highlighted to the BBC that it had previously announced plans to diversify its revenue sources.
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West Mercia Police have warned of the dangers of joining in quizzes and question on platforms such as Facebook.
The police have warned that these phishing schemes create plenty of ways to fall victim to identity theft.
Police teams are urging people to be wary and not end up providing unscrupulous hackers with the answers to online security questions.
Popular Facebook quizzes often ask users to answer a series of sharable personal questions, ranging from the name of their pet to their birth city.
Some people see them as a fun way to bond with friends or a way to make new ones, but the police said many of these queries are similar, if not identical, to security questions used by banks and other institutions.
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Official figures show the majority – 60 per cent – of pupils saw their schooling affected by the need to self-isolate or shield, often in classes or bubbles, with the average pupil missing five days of school.
Absence rates are typically between 4 per cent and 5 per cent in the first term of the academic year, according to the DfE.
This year the rate stood at 11.7 per cent, or 55 million days, including 7 per cent resulting from Covid self-isolation or shielding.
It also includes a 4.7 per cent absence rate for other reasons, amounting to three days per pupil and 22 million lost school days.
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