Content Based Image Search. What is It, How it Works, What it Means to Members

Purpose is to provide ECCIE community brief overview content based image search technologies, and how these may cause Members to change their behaviors. Or not.

What is Reverse Image, or Content-Based Search?

"Content-based" technologies analyze the actual contents versus the metadata (keywords, tags, and/or descriptions associated with the, web page its on and ‘nearby’ machine processable text). “Content” refer to colors, shapes, textures, outlines of persons, distances between eyes and thousands of other attributes used to match pictures (or picture fragments, cropped or edited pics). People (including of course Jane Provider and Bob Hobby), cars, bottles, couches or any manufactured item, animals, signs; with sufficiently high resolution contents of documents, license plate or registration numbers, and biometric data, etc.) This software is getting a lot more powerful. In the future it will be used in connection with artificial intelligence technologies which utilize boolean search and deductive reasoning capacities.

The “consumer class” of software is mostly free and fairly powerful.
Examples are TinEye, Byo Image Search, GazoPa, RevIMG, IM2GPS, Idée, Google Images, and imgSeek, among hundreds of specialized software.

Industrial strength software (used by military, customs/immigration and in govt intelligence gathering; in private sector in retail and shrinkage-management, by lawyers, bounty hunters, bill collectors, stalkers and the committed) is even more powerful, utilizing biometric tools for content-based matching. Sally Stalker and Creepy Hubert Hobby can, fairly easily, get access to industrial strength software.

Should Members care? Yes.

Any picture that you have ever posted anywhere, can be found by software. In a significant majority of the time, your pictures can and will be found by anyone looking for it AND there is associated metadata that enables the searcher to learn a trove of personal information about you. Or you about them.

What to Do About This?

+ Learn about it.
+ Be aware that its reaching level of ubiquity
+ POST UNIQUE PICS
+ NEVER post a pic that is also posted on your private FB or any other site (Unless you want the world to know you posted same pics here and on FB, etc)
+ GO BACK IN TIME and think about things you may have posted months or years or even decades ago, and understand that these are “indexed” by machine

Any pics that have ever been posted anywhere, ever DO NOT USE THEM here, unless you want all the associated pics and metadata to be revealed to the world. Use unique pics. (Self shots in bathroom mirror personal and community faves!). If you post it here do NOT put same pic on your FB page, even if you "just love it"... If you send it to someone by email or text or otherwise, consider possibility THEY may post it, with/without your consent.

We on the moderator side of the equator come across lots of “breaches of privacy” that cause anywhere from discomfort to lives-turned-up-side-down, which would not have happened BUT FOR this reverse image search technology and how it can be and is being utilized.

Its good to use pictures. Makes Jane Provider look great, lures Bob Hobby and brings good things to life. Just make sure they are unique and NOT the same pics posted elsewhere.

19Trees
Austin Mod Staff

Cut and pasted from Wikipedia:

Content Based Image Systems

CIRES: Content Based Image Retrieval System[3]
Cortina[4]
IMMENSELAB[5][6]
Imprezzeo Image Suite Enterprise Visual Search[7]
isk-daemon: an open source database server capable of adding content-based (visual) image searching to image related website or software.[8]
LIRE - Lucene based Image Retrieval[9][10]
GRire- Golden Retriever Image Retrieval[11]
LTU-Corbis Visual Search[12]
Octagon[13]
PIBE[14]
RevIMG[15]
SHIATSU[16]
Superfish.com: Large scale visual search[17]
Chic Engine: Visual fashion search engine[18]
TinEye[19]
University of Washington FIDS Demo[20]
Visual image search demo, pixolution GmbH[21][22]
Visual recognition factory[23]
Windsurf[24]

Good stuff, Trees. Word to the wise.

Or follow my simple rule, never post a picture that you intended to be private. Anything you post on the internet can be found out. It all depends on how determined one is. I sure bet Anthony Weiner had heard my advice.

Excellent reminder Trees. Thank you.