Thanks for the warning, it's a good point! But it should be all good - I don't like facial distortion, so my method of taking passport photos (or for any official-ish thing) involves setting up an old actual camera with a manual aperture and a tripod.

(I tend to do it myself cos other people get exasperated after about the 15th photo of me looking like a murderer.)

I do like the idea of being hard to surveil though! Didn't think about that aspect of selfie culture! But presumably if they're using photo matching to the previous passport having a distorted image would impact its chances of being accepted?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If it fails the facial recognition then it just goes to a person to check, so if it's not obvious it might just get approved anyway.

If you have a big mole and they notice it's on the opposite side then they will probably reject the photo, but most if the time the mirroring or distortion is hard to spot so it will probably get accepted anyway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Mirroring may won't work for me due to a distinguishing mark but it sounds like one of those phone selfies with a huge nose would.

Hmm decisions decisions. On the one hand I'm against surveillance capitalism, on the other hand what's the bet that facial recognition tech improves exponentially and I'm stuck with identification that looks like Gollum for no purpose.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

If it helps your decision, they probably have plenty of previous photos to use so it probably won't make much difference 😅