It has been described as the ‘most disturbing site on the internet’.
PimEyes is a search engine that uses AI to search for any face that is uploaded, finding every image of that person online in seconds.
I tested it out with images of myself and my wife – and it certainly offered a wake-up call. In each case, it uncovered images that I hadn’t been aware were online.
Perhaps scariest of all was the fact images of my wife on Instagram appeared (despite her profile being private).
Sounds scary. However, bear in mind that the likes of TinEye have been around a while. Anyway, I thought I’d give it a try. It found three examples of me, that I knew about. None of the ones that are behind a private profile. Over the years, plenty have been uploaded, yet this app didn’t find them. Nothing from here, for example. So it’s not that good yet. It might be, but it’s not there yet by any means.
Privacy experts speaking to DailyMail.com warned that people ‘searching’ people who they pass in the street could soon become an unwelcome reality.
Well, yes, this could be a possibility. However, it all depends on how well you lock down your profiles. I think we can put this one down as something to keep an eye on, but it’s not that well developed at the movement.
People ‘searching’ passers by to find their social media profiles is likely to become common warned Paul Bischoff, Consumer Privacy Advocate at Comparitech.
Except that the app developers state that it doesn’t search social media. My search tends to confirm that.
‘Snapping a photo of someone on the street and looking up who they are without their consent is probably going to be a fairly common, although unsavory, practice within the next few years.’
Yes, possibly, but those images need to be there to be searched in the first place.
Surely,the fact that you are out in a public place means that anyone can look at you? If you don’t want to be identified,stay away from social media.I publish photos on the Flickr site and some of them show people, all taken in a public place.
So “private” on instawhore doesn’t actually mean that something is private?
Well, I’ve learned something today!
I think that the privacy ship sailed years ago. I don’t use ad blockers partly because I’m quite fascinated by the hits and misses of targeted advertising. Once while sitting in the car in Aldi carpark, I commented to my daughter on the fact that there was a Bently parked nearby. The comment that our Korando was more practical lead me to mention that you can now get a Bently SUV. Ads for Bently SUVs started appearing on my phone. I also get ads for newbuild houses in nearby Beverley. On a recent trip to Sunderland I was getting similar ads but for sites in the North East. Yes folks, your phone is tracking you and people who post ads to it listen to your conversations and know where you are.
It found only one photo of me wearing a kippah in Israel. Perhaps that website was created by islamist cunts and progressives in order to target a certain demographic?
Does the image you send to PimEyes then join the others of you available on line?
No. They don’t store any images. At least, that’s what they say.
I tried it with pictures of me, my wife and my stepsister. No matches. I suppose that means that we’re nonentities.
I tried it with some AI generated non-people; 0 matches – so far so good.
I then tried with some people who whilst not exactly famous, do have an internet footprint in the news etc from business activities. Searching their names on google images yields several results of different shots. TinEye found one of them, but all variations of the same photo I uploaded and none of the others of that person in different shots.
The other yielded no results despite there being several on google, including the one I uploaded. Pretty useless in its current incarnation.