[HN Gopher] They See Your Photos
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       They See Your Photos
        
       Author : vladyslavfox
       Score  : 69 points
       Date   : 2024-12-14 21:09 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (theyseeyourphotos.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (theyseeyourphotos.com)
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Imagine how much Meta has on your overall profile from your fb
       | photo uploads.
        
         | Etheryte wrote:
         | Plus who you write on Whatsapp, plus what you like on
         | Instagram, plus what ads you see online, what ads you click
         | through on, etc.
        
         | globular-toast wrote:
         | > your fb photo uploads
         | 
         | Don't forget other people's uploads. You don't have to use
         | facebook to be on there. At one time _not_ using it probably
         | only served to make you more interesting to the system.
        
       | 29athrowaway wrote:
       | EXIF tags in images can have your camera and GPS info.
       | 
       | You can clear EXIF tags before sharing files.
       | 
       | Most social networks will remove EXIF tags from pictures before
       | serving them to other people. Except silly social networks used
       | by insurrectionists.
       | 
       | But even without the EXIF tags there's plenty of info that can be
       | extracted from a picture. Face biometrics is one of them.
        
         | gmuslera wrote:
         | I suppose that this xkcd (https://xkcd.com/1425/) is relevant
         | enough, just that we already took those 5+ years of research to
         | be able to tell what is in the photo.
        
       | genezeta wrote:
       | So, I just click the example pic with a guy and two kids, one on
       | his shoulders, and it describes saying it "shows a detailed
       | close-up view of a textured surface, possibly a fabric or
       | wallpaper". And then it goes on to say that the "photograph
       | itself seems to be devoid of any human presence, focusing
       | entirely on the abstract design."
       | 
       | I click another one with a family on a field. It says mostly the
       | same as before.
       | 
       | EDIT: Oh, wait a minute! I had Resist Fingerprinting activated.
       | So they're probably just reading the image through a <canvas> and
       | getting shit from that.
       | 
       | In any case it's interesting to know that it works as a way to
       | block _some_ of it. But Google  & co. just run it on their
       | servers so...
        
       | runningmike wrote:
       | Using a Google api reveals much more....
        
         | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
         | What are some examples?
        
         | geor9e wrote:
         | than?
         | 
         | "In this experiment, we use Google Vision API to extract the
         | story behind a single photo."
        
       | vouaobrasil wrote:
       | As much as I appreciate the effort to create a technological
       | solution that avoids big tech like Google, I find the best way is
       | still prints. I'm usually 'the photographer' in the family and
       | after an event I just order prints to the house of the relevant
       | family members (or bring them over myself). Nothing can really
       | compare to holding the physical product in your hand.
       | 
       | Additionally, due to the small cost of prints, there's a real
       | incentive to only show a few of the best so that it doesn't
       | devolve into endless scrolling.
        
         | autoexec wrote:
         | Have you checked the privacy policy of your photo lab/printer?
         | It's possible that they're collecting digital copies of your
         | pictures, selling them (or just information about them) to
         | third parties, as well as selling them/turning them over to the
         | police and other government agencies.
        
           | gnopgnip wrote:
           | Which ones do those things?
        
             | mixmastamyk wrote:
             | All of them. At the very least its worth hoarding until an
             | opportunity comes up.
        
               | buildbot wrote:
               | Are you suggesting that all photo printing labs secretly
               | keep copies of their clients photos (including
               | professional photographers selling prints worth
               | thousands) and reselling them as their own? I don't think
               | that any website terms are going to make that okay?
               | 
               | I understand this in how Instagram and Facebook terms
               | read, that they can sublicense your images, and I'm not a
               | lawyer, but sublicense doesn't mean resell as their own?
               | It's still your copyright.
        
           | vouaobrasil wrote:
           | Yes, I do. I read the privacy policy of all the websites I
           | sign up for. In fact, that is the exact reason why I never
           | got a Facebook account. When I read their privacy policy when
           | it first came out when I was an undergraduate student, I was
           | horrified and never signed up.
           | 
           | Of course, that doesn't guarantee everything in this
           | deceptive world, but it's the best I can do certainly.
        
         | CaptRon wrote:
         | Making prints easily available could be a good business idea
         | for a photo storage app
        
         | jorts wrote:
         | Who do you use for printing?
        
       | BadHumans wrote:
       | I uploaded an old image of a keyboard PCB from when I was
       | troubleshooting it and it gave a very detailed response including
       | naming the keyboard the PCB comes from, the time of day the photo
       | was likely taken, and where the photo was likely taken.
        
         | ignoramous wrote:
         | > _... the time of day the photo was likely taken, and where
         | the photo was likely taken._
         | 
         | Possibly from the image file's Exif data:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif#Geolocation
        
           | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
           | Yeah. I have to scrub every photo before I'll upload it. Even
           | the 'remove properties' option in Windows can do some good.
        
       | autoexec wrote:
       | These are the obvious things they can see in the photos. Not
       | shown are the various assumptions they'll make about you based on
       | your photos such as: gay, likely uneducated, high income earner,
       | most likely republican, narcissistic, etc.
       | 
       | Also not shown is what they'll learn by the totality of the data
       | they collect from your pictures such as how often you go on
       | vacation, how often you're seen in new clothing and what kinds of
       | clothes you typically wear, your health, what types of foods you
       | eat, social graphs of everyone you're seen with and changes to
       | your relationship status over time, how often you consume
       | drugs/alcohol, your general level of cleanliness and personal
       | hygiene, etc.
       | 
       | Even a handful of photos can give companies like Google, Apple,
       | and Amazon massive amounts of very personal data but nobody
       | thinks about that when they pull out their phones to take
       | pictures or install a ring camera on their front door.
        
         | BadHumans wrote:
         | For most people, it is too taxing to be on guard 24/7 and they
         | have other things going on in their life that are more pressing
         | like paying rent. I don't blame people for not thinking twice
         | about that Ring camera because unlike most open-source
         | solutions, "it just works."
        
           | 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
           | That's why it would be nice for democracy to work and give us
           | some enforced regulations
        
             | BadHumans wrote:
             | I agree fully but I'm going to play devil's advocate and
             | say the person who just won the election won the popular
             | vote so whatever you are about to get is democracy in
             | action because the majority of people voted for what is
             | about to happen.
        
               | downWidOutaFite wrote:
               | No it isn't. A democracy only works with informed voters.
               | The amount of lies and obfuscation spewed by Trump's
               | campaign is a successful attempt to deliberately break
               | democracy. They don't have a mandate to do much besides
               | mass deportation because they didn't talk about firing
               | the entire federal workforce during the campaign. Project
               | 2025 does talk about that but Trump lied during the
               | campaign and said he disavowed it.
               | 
               | I think oligarch Peter Thiel gave away the game in this
               | clip at 3:26 where he says "you can make pro Trump
               | arguments but that's the democratic question"
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luTHVKFi3dc&t=3m24s
        
             | voisin wrote:
             | Woah woah woah, let's not get hasty here. Can't we think of
             | the shareholders for once?
        
         | internetter wrote:
         | > Not shown are the various assumptions they'll make about you
         | based on your photos such as: gay, likely uneducated, high
         | income earner, most likely republican, narcissistic, etc.
         | 
         | I uploaded a photo of myself as a child and based on the house
         | in the background, the brand of shoes on my feet, and the
         | clothes my dad was wearing, it flagged me as "middle class", so
         | at least one part of your claim is incorrect. I suspect this
         | may be the same model google used internally
        
           | JimDabell wrote:
           | I uploaded a race photo and it said that I appeared
           | economically comfortable because I was wearing running gear
           | like a hydration pack.
        
             | internetter wrote:
             | Well, are you?
        
         | nostrademons wrote:
         | Do you do any ML for Big Tech? Because it's actually a lot
         | simpler than that: the input is the sum total of your activity,
         | and the output is the likelihood that you'll click on an ad or
         | buy a product on a specific surface. You certainly _can_
         | predict demographic information like sexual orientation,
         | education level, income, political party, and with a fair
         | degree of accuracy, but all it does is add noise to the
         | calculation you really want, which is optimizing the amount of
         | money you 'll make. To the extent that demographics are
         | computed, it's to make advertisers feel better about
         | themselves. They would almost always be better off with a
         | blanket "optimize my sales" campaign, but it's hard for ad
         | agencies and digital marketers to justify their existence that
         | way.
        
       | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
       | Delay between uploading and response led to me uploading the pic
       | 3 times.
       | 
       | The result: The AI analyzed the pic 3 times and each time added
       | more detail - like the model of the burned out SUV, text on a
       | traffic sign and more in-depth analysis of objects laying around
       | the SUV.
       | 
       | A forth upload yielded some pure conjecture; it seemed to be
       | looking for increasingly sinister causes.                   There
       | appears to be some damage to the windows of the car that is more
       | than just fire damage suggesting that the vehicle may have been
       | vandalized or attacked before the fire occurred. The debris
       | scattered around the car is inconsistent, suggesting a
       | possibility that the fire was not accidental.
        
       | Hizonner wrote:
       | It'd be more terrifying if it didn't hallucinate earrings on
       | somebody whose ears are _out of frame_ , make comments about the
       | left shoe of a _barefoot child_ being out of focus, and so
       | forth...
        
         | Muromec wrote:
         | It is terrifying exqctly because it does hallucinate
        
       | IshKebab wrote:
       | This is just an ad for their photo service. Which presumably has
       | terrible search features, if it doesn't use AI to analyse them.
       | That's one of the best features in Google Photos!
        
         | zitterbewegung wrote:
         | It is a weird advertisement when Ente (the name of the service)
         | will also see your photos.
        
           | philips wrote:
           | The service is end to end encrypted with local AI for
           | indexing.
           | 
           | I tried it a few months ago however and the upload/encryption
           | was so slow from their desktop app it would have taken weeks
           | to migrate my photos to the service.
        
         | phoronixrly wrote:
         | Terrible search without AI is a bit of a stretch. Also Google
         | does not have a monopoly on object recognition in photos. There
         | are self-hosted solutions that readily provide you with that
         | without feeding a faceless AI with your photos while boiling
         | the ocean.
        
       | busymom0 wrote:
       | I gave the following advice to someone I was chatting with on
       | tinder:
       | 
       | 1. Remember that when you send pics through imessage, it sends
       | the exif data which includes location, date when it was taken etc
       | and other info.
       | 
       | 2. Disable Live Photos as it often captures things you may not
       | want to capture few moments before and after the pic is taken.
        
       | geor9e wrote:
       | Are machine learning image classifiers new to people? I don't get
       | what's controversial here. How did people think they were
       | searching their photos apps for beach and dog and getting
       | automatic albums this whole time. Am I missing the point of this
       | post/website?
        
         | pyinstallwoes wrote:
         | Most people don't even know what machine learning even means or
         | is.
        
           | geor9e wrote:
           | Oh wait it's an ad.
        
           | cerved wrote:
           | I know! It does AI!!
        
       | kylehotchkiss wrote:
       | This is really cool. I posted a photo of what I think was my
       | great grandparents into it and it explained their circumstances
       | in fascinating ways (to the point of mentioning aged clothing, a
       | detailed I overlooked).
       | 
       | I've been trying to figure out how to process hundreds of my own
       | scanned photos to determine any context about them. This was
       | convincing enough for me to consider google's vision API. No way
       | I'd ever trust OpenAI's apis for this.
        
         | changoplatanero wrote:
         | Where is the difference in trust level between google and
         | openai coming from?
        
       | duxup wrote:
       | The few I tried were pretty unimpressive. It felt like elementary
       | deduction with a lot of filler words and few facts... and
       | straight up bad information.
        
       | temporallobe wrote:
       | I uploaded an image of a 6-panel hand-drawn cartoon I created and
       | it very accurately described the scene and overall theme of the
       | joke, even pointing out that it was hand-drawn, used no colors,
       | and that the text in the speech bubbles was very legible. I did
       | not expect that level of detail.
        
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