Any internet user who owns a video or blog, or related to any sort of video shoot or photography must keep one thing in mind, that if someone else rather than yourself uses that image or video of you without your consent, could cause damage to your repute, ethically and legally as well. A decade ago there was no such technology or way to find your personal media online and how that is being used for legal and illegal purposes. But today your privacy means something and you can track, find and protect your online media in seconds with impeccable technologies such as TinEye and Google Images. Let’s discuss this further with some appropriate details.
Reverse imaging by Google is a remarkable technology, in common search queries we type text or phrase to find what we need, but in this tech, you specifically add/upload your desired image you wanted to be found online and just hit search, Google will go through all the images available online in the database and cross match those images with your provided one in the manner of shape, color, size, texture or background matches to your search and BINGO!
Find Your Original Media
As per above briefing, it is very simple, just upload your actual image in the pure original form and Google will do the rest. With this search you will get the results pretty similar or even 90% close to your actual image, which means anyone else who uses your images could have changed the size or color. While finding your original image, you may also find the exact image because sometimes people do not bother to crop or revamp any image they took online and paste as it is, like in magazines and newspapers. When you are able to find your image and you definitely will, the rest is up to you, either you ask them to mention you as a source, or you can charge them.
PS: If you see the rough, violent or extreme use of your personal media on any source, you can raise a lawsuit as well, and you know what? This is a serious offense in law.
Find Your Used Media
If you want to know how much your own used image is being reused on internet, you can also find that by searching the full or a piece of that image in Google Reverse Images, it will help you find anything related to your used image, which is being used anywhere on the internet in any form, it will even show some paintings in the result that are the obvious or really close match to your used image search. In result of finding your used image, some will be photoshopped and in some cases height and width will be completely changed, but at the end technology doesn’t care, it will show you what you are searching for.
Sizewise Search
Every image has its own size, at first raw size, then editing size and then final size. In search engines like Google, you will find the same image with plenty of sizes, to be precise 100% same image but with the difference of size. In that manner, while using the Google reverse images, you can target your query more like a point blank range while mentioning the sizes as well, so no stone goes unturned!
Upside Down Search
Image thieves think they are smarter than the actual owners, in rare cases yes, but in general a big “NO”, why? Because now a days a trick is being used by those thieves, that they reverse or rotate your actual image and then they use it. So when you search for your own image with it actual existence, search shows nothing but irrelevant images, because bots are already tricked with this reverse and rotate thing. The best way to avoid such irritation, you must do the same, create reverse and rotate copies of your image and then search again.
Tried them all? Or Tired from all of them? Need an easy and better solution?
Watermark Your Images
This is not a run and chase situation here, if you can try the above techniques, those will definitely work for you, one stole something from you and you stole it back, if you are easy with this cat and mouse thing, then no problems at all, but if you need a concrete and one time solution to control this online theft of your images and media, Watermarkly is the solution.
By using watermarking technique you can save a lot of time while chasing thieves and focus on your business. Watermarking can used on your images and video for copyright and legal purposes. Your online media will stay untouched because it is nearly impossible to remove a watermark from an image or video without spoiling it. By using Visual Watermark you will get two things for sure.
- Protection of your Media
- Free Promotion (If someone still uses your media with your watermark on it)
We believe every necessary aspect regarding images and media protection is being shared and discussed here. Now it is up to your own ease that whichever way you prefer to track, find and protect your images online.
