There are now image search engines, which means that if you use the same photo of yourself on multiple online sites (e.g. FaceBook, online dating, and LinkedIn), then someone can search for all instances of your photo and piece together your personal information.
To get around this, I propose a simple drag-and-drop utility that alters a photo in nearly invisible ways that defeat image search engines. The picture would be cropped by one pixel and brightened or dimmed very slightly in different places. Some dark colors would be replaced by other dark colors in a random way. The file name would be replaced with a string of random characters. To the naked eye, the picture would still look identical, but it could then be uploaded securely.
Thank you.-- phundug, Aug 23 2012 TinEye http://www.tineye.com/A "reverse image search" engine that won't be fooled by simple changes. [Wrongfellow, Aug 25 2012] The idea makes some conceptual sense, but those services can already see through watermark changes and similar. Do they use a pixel by pixel comparison, or do they use an averaging approach?-- MechE, Aug 23 2012 They extract "layers" of info from the image, analysing it as a human eye would see it.
The solution is to use different photographs of yourself. Take a medium shot, and wear a different shirt in each.-- neelandan, Aug 25 2012 I hate tineye too phundug. To me the worst thing about technologies like this is they are like "over the counter" stalking tools. theve become mainstream, and it creates an air of acceptability which normalizes stalking behaviours.
Im beginning a grad project that hopes to resolve similar problems to this myself.-- bob, Aug 25 2012 Reverse image searches are now intelligent enough that the picture would have to be drastically altered to not show up as a match.-- Voice, Aug 25 2012 If someone bothers to search on a photo like this they need to talk to a psychiatrist about that stalking thing they have going on.-- Phrontistery, Aug 26 2012 I have a great solution: Don't put photos of yourself online indiscriminately. You can't go plastering your mug all over creation then complain about stalking when somebody uses them to track you.
If you like, [bob], you can put me down as co-author on your thesis.-- ytk, Aug 26 2012 random, halfbakery