How to use PimEyes - a brief guide

PimEyes is a face recognition search engine that is available to everyone. It uses different modern technologies, like facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and reverse image search to help you find your photos on the Internet. We have provided a lot of useful tools and features that can help you improve your searches, but also get the most out of your subscription. In this article, we explain these features and how to use them.

Table of contents

1. When you perform a search using PimEyes
   • Removing search results from PimEyes
2. Main functionalities available for subscribers

• Accessing the website that a photo appears on
• Alerts
• Search Filters
• PimEyes’ Takedown Requests
• Exporting results to PDF or CSV
• Share result
• Deep Search

3. Additional Information about a result

When you perform a search using PimEyes

The first action you take after entering our website is to upload a photo and perform a search. Note that we are storing uploaded photos only for 30 minutes, then the system deletes it permanently.

The search process takes a few seconds and we work hard on providing you with the best results containing your face. At this time we check publicly available sources like websites, blogs, news, forums, pages containing explicit content, criminal records and estimate how many of them potentially published your photos. You will have a free search option but if you want to unlock website links that lead to the original source of your images, you will need to become a subscriber. We have several subscription plan options so you can choose which suits your needs best.

Removing search results from PimEyes

• Use opt-out service - you can upload your photo, confirm your Identity by uploading your Id or passport, enter reason why you want to delete your images from search results and in about 48 hours system will clear your search results;

• If you want to delete a single image, you can press the desired image and press “Exclude from public results”, then “Proceed with excluding image”. You have to provide your contact email and short description why you want to remove images. Then press submit a request. The reported result will be immediately hidden from the search results. You will need to update the page to see the changes.

Note: Review of the request and complete removal of the search result takes about 48 hours. So if your request doesn't get approved, the search image will reappear in search results.

Both services are free of charge.

Main functionalities available for subscribers

Accessing the website that a photo appears on

As a subscriber (of the Open Plus, PROtect, or Advanced plan) you can access all the sources of search results (websites and images). Opening the link is possible by clicking on the main picture or the "Open website" button and By clicking the photo icon, you can get the link to the source image and display the original, unblurred photo. How can you use this information?

Generally, a website is built in a way that all the uploaded attachments, including images, have their own addresses on a server. These addresses are different from the page addresses in that they end with a file extension (.jpg or .png for photos, .pdf or .doc for documents, etc.). The address to an individual image is not always easy to find because it is important for the website administrators, and usually not so much for users.

In our case, however, information about those links is crucial. Imagine that you want to remove your photo from a particular website because it is being used illegally and it violates your image rights. Sometimes this photo is uploaded to a page on which it is difficult or even impossible to find, this is where the link to the source image comes to the rescue. Let's say you have a photo that's being used improperly on a specific website, and it's against the rules for them to use your picture without permission. Sometimes, this photo gets uploaded to a page where it's really hard, or even impossible, to locate it (for example, if it's a cover photo for a post on a category page and by the time you search for it, newer posts have replaced it). The photo hasn't been used anywhere else on the website, so it's practically impossible to find. However, it's still stored on that website, and you can't be certain they won't use it again. Once you have the link to the source image, you can check if the given picture is still under that link. If it is, the website administrator hasn’t removed your photo. If it’s not, you don’t have to worry anymore.

Alerts

PimEyes’ Alerts is our monitoring tool. It is available in all subscription plans. When you set an Alert, you are notified about newly-found results containing your face. You can set up multiple Alerts (3 in the Open Plus plan, 15 in the PROtect plan, and 500 in the Advanced plan). On our blog you can read more about using Alerts to protect your image.

Search Filters

You can use the sorting option in all available plans. It will sort your results by date. Also, we have a safe search option and by choosing safe search, explicit images will be hidden from your search. By choosing grouping,there won’t be displayed several identical photos. If the same image appears on several different websites, they will be grouped and you will be able to ungroup them if needed.

PimEyes’ Takedown Requests

The Takedown Requests service is part of the PROtect and Advanced subscriptions. Thanks to this tool you can order DMCA&GDPR Takedown Notices for the results found and hidden by the PROtect Image.

In the Takedown Requests service we find the administrators of the websites where the unwanted images appear, draft and send multiple DMCA&GDPR Takedown Notices on your behalf, monitor if the photos have been removed, and report the results of our interventions.

Bonus: In the Takedown Requests service we can send the DMCA&GDPR Takedown Notices not only for photos that our website has found, you can also do a manual takedown by providing the links yourself, it just should be a publicly available website.

Exporting results to PDF or CSV

The feature of generating PDF or CSV files from the results is available in the Advanced Subscription plan. Use the “export” button in order to export the results. This feature is very useful when you manage your results and you want to compare them quickly. One-time purchase offers exporting results to PDF or CSV as well, the difference is that in that case, you can export files only one time and all the results will be sent on the email you registered with.

Share results

If you would like to share the results you have obtained with other people, you can accomplish this by locating and pressing the designated "share" button. This action will enable you to distribute findings to individuals or a wider audience, allowing them to view the shared content.

Deep Search

Deep search is a feature available only for the Advanced subscribers. This mechanism is used to search our index more thoroughly. The Deep Search takes a little bit longer than a regular search. It is possible that by performing a Deep Search we will find more results with a given face, but not always.

Additional Information about a result

There are several important pieces of information about a given result:

The date when our bots came across this photo

Important: It is impossible for us to provide the date of when the picture was uploaded to the Internet.

Result ID When you click on the button with the copy icon on it, you automatically copy the ID of a specific result. Use this ID to report an issue to the support center available in all subscription plans.

Share the result

We have added the “Share” button to simplify sharing the results. Use it when you want to show your result to your friends or a broader audience.

Perform search with this image

You can use this button to perform a recursive search with the thumbnail of the open result, that will help our search engine to identify more precisely images containing your features.