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September 25, 2023 - How many pictures have you seen floating around the internet in which the people who appear in them are unidentified? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Those days may be gone. A website by the name of PimEyes is using facial recognition to identify the people in those pictures, and it's available to anyone.
I tested PimEyes out myself. I uploaded my own picture and did a search. It took less than ten seconds for the service to return another image that I use in business. And it didn't mix my picture up with those of other people. To be honest, I found the results to be a little creepy.
PimEyes isn't free. You can upload a picture and do a search for free, but if you want information associated with the search results you receive - such as where the pictures are stored and any names associated with those pictures - you'll have to pay. A one-time search charge will cost you $15. If you want to take out a monthly plan with them, those start at $29.99 per month for 25 searches per day and they go up from there.
While PimEyes does say that you're only supposed to use the service to search for your own picture, they don't appear to monitor that. I was able to upload pictures of other people I know and the results were fairly astounding. I knew the websites where the search return results were stored, and the information that would have been provided had I paid for them would have been more than enough to identify the people the people in the pictures and have given me everything I need to know to track them down.
With technology like this available to anyone willing to pay for it, anyone who is trying to remain undetectable really needs to think carefully about their online activities. If you post pictures of yourself online, you can be found. The same can be said if you have friends that are posting pictures that include you being in them.
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