EITHOS present at the EU 2024 Open Days

GATV researchers Juan Antonio Rodrigo and Miguel Antonio Barbero Álvarez attended last May 4th to the EU Open Days as technical representatives of the EITHOS project.

EITHOS (EUROPEAN IDENTITY THEFT OBSERVATORY SYSTEM) aims to develop an observatory for the detection of identity theft and phishing in the digital environment, giving greater capacity to European citizens, police, law enforcement and political entities to contribute to the prevention, detection, investigation and mitigation of online identity theft and phishing crimes and their social impact. EITHOS is based on two pillars: providing a common information and intelligence portal on identity theft in Europe and educating citizens through innovative awareness campaigns. In addition, it addresses the challenges faced by law enforcement authorities by developing robust IT toolkits to improve their investigations.

Within the “Strong Digital Europe” area of the EU Open Days, the EITHOS information booth offered an immersive experience in order to delve into privacy, data protection and the potential of AI and illustrate attendees with informative displays, screens and tools of facial detection and deepfakes generation. In order to raise awareness through impact, we showed the ease with which facial and voice deepfakes can be performed today, modifying the faces of attendees with those of celebrities and actors in real time. With this, the risks that such ease entails were explained to the attendees, with a didactic spirit. Both approaches, the impact and the didactic, managed to raise awareness among several hundred people during the day.
Challenges and quizzes were also offered to increase understanding of the details associated with identity theft and its risks.

Finally, they were encouraged to share their favorite moments from the experience and provide feedback for future events. Enthusiastic support from partners and the team contributed significantly to the success of the event.

The attendance and feedback between researchers, partners and attendees helped to raise the visibility of this issue, and contributed to shaping the European digital landscape of the future.