One in four female Dutch lawmakers say they were targeted.
Caroline van der Plas saw her own face in a fake sex video. She never made it. A computer did. Fifteen women in the Dutch parliament just stood up together. Their faces were pasted into fake porn watched tens of thousands of times. These deepfake images can be built from one clear photo in minutes. If it can happen to them, it can happen to your kid or your mom.
One in four female Dutch lawmakers say they were targeted.
According to NL Times, one in four women in the Dutch parliament report being hit this way. And it's not just adults. A UNICEF study across eleven countries found at least 1.2 million children had their photos turned into fake sexual images in one year.
A deepfake doesn't need a famous face. It just needs one clear photo of yours, sitting on a public profile right now.
These women want faster reporting. But sometimes the real question is who checks your age at the door.
You're at a pub in Manchester. You hold up your phone. It flashes green. You're in. No plastic card, no birthdate shown. Age verification just went mainstream across the U.K. this year. The bartender never sees your name or address. That sounds great. But this same check is spreading to apps, games, and social media everywhere. And how it's built decides what happens to your data.
Proving you're over 18 shouldn't hand over your whole life.
According to the Solicitors Journal, U.K. shoppers can now show their age without giving up sensitive details. There's even a standard for doing this cleanly. The catch? Following it is voluntary. Nobody makes companies do it.
After a site confirms you're old enough, it should keep one thing. A yes. Everything else it keeps is a choice, not a rule.
So a green checkmark says you passed. But can a system tell if you're even a real person?
Someone holds a printed photo up to a phone camera. The bank app opens an account. No mask, no fancy trick. Just paper. Biometric authentication is really two jobs bolted together. One job matches your face. The other checks that you're alive and standing there. Many systems only ever built the first one. And your face is the password you post in public every single day.
A printed photo can beat a face scan.
According to ComplyCube, as of 2023, about four in ten U.S. businesses could be fooled this way. Only sixty percent had a liveness check. That's a real system trusting a photo against a photo.
Next time your bank app asks you to blink, don't roll your eyes. That blink is the whole security model.
Look at all three. Your face is a public credential, copied every time you post. One system fakes it. One system checks your age at the door. One system fails to prove you're alive. The same photo is the weapon and the target.
Links to every story and today's CaraComp podcast deep-dives are in the description. See you next time.
