A type of super-Google, however, only applied to the faces of people on the Internet: a search engine that, like the most infallible investigator, hunts the four corners of the Net and finds data and details of people starting from a simple photo. A little bit what Shazam does with songs (finding the titles starting from fragments of music), but here we go much further.
Here’s what it does “PimEyes“: Starting from biometric data of a face portrayed in a photo, from which you can get a lot of other information, most of which for a fee. While this can be fun, the risks associated with such a dynamic are equally evident.
At the price level, they are useful 36 euros per month (35.99 to be precise) to be able to make 25 identifications every day. While with 95 euros per month you even get a task force of experts who, for 4 hours a month, take action to find (and delete) their photos scattered around the Net. These searches do not include social networks, but the pool is still wide and varied. .
So wide (and so varied) that there are those who wanted to see clearly. And so, last year, in Germany PimEyes came under the magnifying glass of the German Agency for Data Protection and Freedom of Information in Baden-Württemberg: the hypothesis is that the search mechanism violate privacy and above all the GDPR.
In defense of the site there is the explanation given more times than at the bottom of the research it does nothing but draw on public sites. What shifts the balance, rather, is the use the user intends to make of the information he finds. Meanwhile, there are those who try to follow the trail, such as the “Public Mirror” portal, which works in a similar way to PimEyes. Also on him, the Baden-Württemberg agency turned its spotlight on in 2021.
