Picture recognition?

[Magnustad]

Maybe I've just missed this functionality on this site, but I would like to have a posting place for suspicious images of potential scammers; and I mean as a very quick means to find out, not having to post everything that belongs to the case until later if nothing conclusive comes out of it. As we all come from different cultures, I was conned with images of a well-known porn actress, from the US. I'm from a different continent, so my knowledge of these girls is very, very minimal. I spotted Tony Blair as the chairman of a fictitious law firm once. We all have to chip in.

I know that on some sites you have a gallery of famous scams, but is far from complete, and new pictures crop up daily. Therefore I suggest a dedicated branch were you can post images and other members can check them out, to aid the poor scammed-to-be to terminate any further contact; my belief that the turn-around time from posting to identification could sometimes be as little as a few hours. In dubious cases one can have a slightly different approach, e.g. if there has been no positive identification even after say two weeks...

After a positive identification these images can be moved to the notoriety gallery. As the scammers work in spates, and contact a lot of potential victims at the same time it would be good to have the images reside on this identification page for a few days.

Personally, I think it would be even fun, and as a lot of the scammers also use these pages, it may work, if not as a deterrent, but at least as way to slow things down.

An index with names won't help, but if one could find a generic way to describe the contents of the images it would lead to a useful database.

I'm certain that many people would like to help out.

I would like be of assistance if I may, and is allowed to participate in this "project".

If this exists now, I would be pleased if someone could point me to where I could find this. Many thanks.

PS I just noticed that there is a function that takes care of the whole concept with phones, faxes, mail etc. But as this is run by the moderators of this forum, I believe that getting outside help with identification of the persons in the images is the first and obvious thing to do in case you want to know if you are to pursue the contact or not. The scammers are insidious. They often give out very little information about themselves, but very often whet the appetites by adding a single enticing picture very early. The moderators of this forum, may be very knowledgeable, but can not keep track of what is going on every day, not reasonably, so the help of the public should be welcome?!

PPS I know that there could be innocent people posted here too, which unfortunately can not be avoided, so one has to be very careful in this respect, so the monitors much have a quick glance at what is uploaded. Innocent people will however be posted here for inspection under other specific heading for a specif scam investigation...

I think that family pictures and such like should be exempted from posting, unless there is a very strong sense of something be wrong. I think that in case an innocent person has actually been used for criminal intentions, it would reasonably be appreciated if they are informed, if recognized in the pictures. Public people, I guess, don't care, as their pics are used in many places. One should however not underestimate the value of integrity.

[Magnustad]

Maybe there is picture recognition software out there that one can use too? À la CSI?

[Bubbles]

Have you tried tineye.com or using google images to search the photos. You can have good success with those two image search engines.

[Magnustad]

I haven't heard of tineye before, and google images I didn't consider as I thought it was only for showing pictures with proper "tags".

Thanks for the tip. I will try them directly.

[next victim]

If you have a FF browser there is an add-on called "Who stole my picture". I host my pix in P'bucket then right click to check with that tool. It has tineye, G images and 3 other engines to use.

[Magnustad]

Thanks, I wish I had these tools a year ago... But I think I''ll quit this racket, as I'm not finding anything but scams. Losing hope in mankind (or womankind?)

Sigh, not with relief, but with ... To paraphrase: This is the way the world ends, not with being banged, but with a whimper.