Reverse Image Search: Why a 95% Match
The person your son has a date with could kill him. You can check that person's photo and find nothing wrong with it. A man called Stephen Port found four men on dating apps. He drugged all four of them, and he murdered them. You couldn't have stopped him just by searching his photo online. Who is your son meeting this weekend? By the end, you won't let a photo fool you.
A thief can steal someone's photo and still get a 95 percent match. You learn nothing about him from that number.
Port got each man to come back to his flat. He drugged them, and then he made their deaths look like overdoses. The Guardian reported on his sentencing in 2016.
What did his photo on the dating app ever prove? Port is never getting out of prison now.
Your son sees a friendly photo on someone's profile. That photo can be completely real. The man who posted it can still be lying.
Port kept meeting new men for months.
Port killed his first victim in June 2014. He kept killing men until September 2015. Four men died before anyone stopped him.
When you get a match, you only learn that the photo is somewhere else online. You never find out if the person is honest.
When you search your photo, the company turns it into numbers. It's just a few thousand numbers, and nothing more. Then the company compares your photo to billions of others.
You get your answer in about 10 seconds. Can you vouch for a stranger after just 10 seconds?
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You'd think a high score means the person is safe. But a thief with a stolen photo gets the highest score.
The person who really owns the photo gets 100 percent. A thief who copied that photo gets 100 percent too. You see exactly the same number for both of them. You can't tell them apart from the score.
A woman in Texas trusted a man who said he was a businessman. She lost over $2 million to him. He was never the man she thought she saw.
Sydney Loofe was murdered after she met someone online. The person she matched with was using a fake identity.
A man who scammed people through dating kidnapped his victims at knifepoint. He got 25 years in prison.
The FBI warns people about exactly these romance scams. You search the photo because you want to feel safe. But a scammer with a stolen photo gets right through.
All you find out is where else the picture is online. You never find out who's actually typing to you. When you get a perfect score, someone has a perfect copy of the photo. And a liar wants that perfect copy.
Don't trust a score to tell you who's safe. Tell someone who you're meeting, every single time.
Save a copy of the photo and the person's name. Text both of them to a friend before you go. Tell that friend where you're meeting.
When you search a photo, you're only checking a picture. Your friend is the one who makes sure you get home.
A scammer copies a real photo of someone else. He uses that photo to build your trust for weeks. Then he asks you for money. And you lose your savings right there.
CaraComp explains the match score in its write-up. On that page, you can see what a score actually measures.
The writers of one technical guide put it plainly. They say your photo gets turned into a set of numbers. A thief can't hide a copy by cropping or recolouring it.
Never send anyone money before you've met them in person. The first time you meet someone, do it somewhere public. If someone asks for money, report it to the FBI's IC3.
One man used a fake identity to meet a woman online. Later on, he broke into her home and assaulted her. A judge gave him 35 years.
You can't know someone's safe just because their photo is real. You keep him safer by knowing where he's going.
Ask your son who he's meeting. Get the person's name and the place they're meeting. Keep that text until he's home safe.
Four men trusted a dating profile, and they died. Ask him tonight, before he leaves.
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