THIS is why reverse image search is so important. . My profile was favorited 2 days ago. Her profile shows one pic of an attractive brunette in her early 20's. Profile says, 21 years old, lives in "California, California" (RED FLAG!) and has a few lines in her about me section: Loves surfing, in college, live alone and single. She also sent me a single word message (Yellow Flag). . My Spidey senses were already on alert when I decided to message her. Really just wanted to see if I could get her to present some rational for her profile location. I mean maybe there really is a legit reason why women often can't or don't list a city (but I doubt it). . We traded 2 or 3 small messages and I mentioned her location seemed wrong. She "confirmed" she lives in LA. I asked her if she ever visits the San Fernando Valley (north of LA). No response in the last 14 hours. . Of course, along the way I saved her pic to my PC so I could do a reverse image check on Google Images. No hits. . But recently, I've also been using Bing search by right clicking on the pic and selecting "Search the web for image." Until this search, Google has a much higher "hit rate" for pics (usually on IG, Twitter, or FB) and Bing usually misses these matches. But this time, Google came up with zero and Bing gets the cigar. . Image search lesson: Google works best for social media hits, Bing seems to work best for news items. Conclusion: Continue to use both. . I got a link to a local news agency in Hawaii with an article from March, 2017. It showed the pic and a sad story of a 20 year old woman who had just died in a car crash on the Big Island. I then Google searched her name and found a few more news stories about the crash, as well as that and other pics. . So she's dead - but apparently lives on in the cloud (is that spooky? on Seeking. Now that I know this is a catfish/scammer, if "she" ever replies I'll have some fun jerking "her" around for a while before I move on. . So assuming your SB's are actually alive... . Life is good. . The Cat
Where I live there are few "live prospects" so when times are slow on SA I used to notice old dormant profiles would magically come back to life, and yes even one that I knew had taken her own life. Now if I see a profile from a few years ago I just ignore them unless they are updated and not just something that reappears because SA or its software reanimates it.
The only image search tool I've ever used is Tineye and for some reason the images on SA don't work on Tineye. I googled reverse image search before writing this post. My results were so complex and confusing I gave up. could you give us a primer, designed for the tech challenged among us, on how to use these tools? Or at least point us in the right direction.
Hey Sweet! . I'll give you a quick overview to get you started. . Google image search (there may be other ways to do this, but this is what I do using a Windows PC. Macs and phones may be different.): 1. For each pic in the profile: - Click it to see it full size, then, - Right click on the image and select "save image as" - A save file dialog box will open. Navigate to a folder you can find later, give the pic a file name you will remember and click "Save" Note: I created a folder on my hard drive called SA_Pics. And when I save a new pic I name it "SA-profilename-nn" Where 'profilename' = the POTs profile name and 'nn' is a serial number like 01, incremented by one for each additional pic for that POT. . 2. In a separate browser window, Go to Google and click "Images" in the upper right corner, then, - Click the little camera icon on the left side of the search bar (under the Google/Images logo, not the URL bar). - Click "Upload an Image (2nd tab after "Paste Image URL") - Click Choose File button - Navigate to the pic folder, - Select the 1st pic you want to search and click the "Open" button . Interpreting the results: 1. You will see your pic 1st. Then one or two links that mean nothing, 2. Below those links you will see a section called "Visually similar images" This also means nothing. 3. IF you see your pic below the "Visually similar images" section, you have a Bingo! 4. Click each of the links below (be SURE you have up to date virus software as some of these pics are stolen from dubious sites) and evaluate what you see. You may get a Twitter or IG account name, you may get taken to Pinterest. Either way, you'll have to poke around and try to figure out who's in the pic versus who posted the pic. 5. If you can get a social media account or real name, do more research by looking at the account, or googling the name from the regular Google page. Note: A match does not always mean catfish or scam. Try to see if person you found is really your POT; look at where they are located, age, and relationship status, as well as profession, education etc. Any inconsistencies are suspicious. . Alternate method (depends on your "default" search engine settings on your browser). My Microsoft Edge browser is set to use Bing as a default. So this lets me check each pic on two different search engines. 1. View the Pic on SA as above, but when you right click, 2. Click the "Search on the web for image" option 3. A new browser window will open. If you get a match, it will appear in the upper line of the search results. The rest of the pics shown are just like the "Visually similar images" results I mentioned for Google. So these are useless. 4. Close the new window and click the next pic in SA to repeat with a new pic. . Interpreting a match is generally the same as with Google matches for steps 4 and 5. . Now let's all fun out there! . Life is good . The Cat
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