What is Skotobaza?
The tradition of leaking photos on the RuNet dates back to the School of Freaks in the early 2000s. School of Freaks is a LiveJournal community where social media users post bad photos for laughs. Skotobaza used to have something similar, but in 2014 Skotobaza launched as a service for storing private photos of VKontakte users. In fact, they are not entirely private - if there is a lock on the photo, then it will not end up in any Animal Farm. It’s just that many people post personal photos for a limited circle of people: for example, in the albums of a closed fitness community. Or in the open. And from there the photographs migrate to the cattle depot.
What can you find in it?
First of all, photos that were not publicly posted by a VKontakte user, but, nevertheless, were somehow exposed somewhere: in the community, among friends, and similar albums. In general, you will be able to see more than you should. Although not all users are in the cattle depot, and not all the newest drains are poured there. As I already said, I found my photos there from 2008, but you are unlikely to find the latest user photos simply because the service has currently stopped collecting photos.
Bypassing the blocking of the Animal Farm
You can bypass the blocking of the Animal Farm site. For this, exactly the same methods are suitable as for bypassing the blocking of the Rutreker website - both of these sites are blocked by Roskomnadzor, and it is enough to log in anonymously. To do this, you can install an extension in your browser; this is described in detail in my article. There are possible extensions for each browser and where to get them.
And recently a new version of Opera with built-in VPN was released, and there is another way to bypass the blocking. To do this, you just need to enable VPN mode in the Opera settings, and then calmly go to the cattle station. I’ll explain, just in case, how to enable VPN in the new Opera.
How to enable VPN in Opera
First, you must have a new Opera (no older than September 2016) - download if not.
Next, go to Opera settings - the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F12. Click Security. A. A VPN icon will appear at the top. All.
Enabling VPN in Opera
You can go to Skotobaza.org.
Fast one-time method
If you are really lazy, then you can bypass the blocking of the Stockyard like this:
- Go here ( Attention, the link has been removed because it no longer works! The free anonymizer is no longer available ).
- Enter “skotobaza.org” in the field and click the “Hide me” button
- You will be directed to the website skotobaza.org
Helper Applications
Third-party services that specialize in such queries can also help you search for images. If Google and Yandex are more “tailored” for text queries, then auxiliary platforms, on the contrary, work better with photos.
TinEye
The largest service with about 10 billion different images.
To take advantage of the platform:
- Write https://www.tineye.com/ in the address bar.
- Download the sample, or use the link to it.
- Study the results.
The system will not only provide links to resources that use a similar image, but will also indicate the frequency of their publications.
Photo Sherlock
A free application for Android that allows you to search through pictures from your smartphone or camera gallery. Great for checking a photo for authenticity.
With its help, you can find fake accounts on social networks, as well as protect your photos from scammers.
The application searches for similar photos using all popular search engines. But despite the ease of use of the program, you should be prepared for regular advertising and the presence of in-app purchases.
PhotoTracker Lite
Extension that works on all popular browsers. It launches a search across several resources at once, including the Bing images database. The user himself selects search sources from the following: Google, Yandex, TinEye and Bing.
After installing the extension, you will be able to search for a similar image by simply right-clicking on the image.
In the utility settings, you can also enable the quick search function, which will allow you to find the desired image in one click. A green button will appear next to each photo, clicking on which will activate the extension.
Results open in new tabs. And their number will directly depend on what services were connected to the search.
Search by image is a convenient function that all popular search engines are equipped with. At the same time, to improve search efficiency, it would not hurt to additionally use special applications whose algorithms apply to several search engines at once.
Where else can you look for people and photos?
If you couldn’t get into the site’s database or couldn’t find anything in it, you can try your luck on other sites. It happens that information that is closed in VK is open on Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Twitter and other networks or posted on unexpected sites. So, here are the ways to get through the information.
Search for people on social networks from Yandex
Let's say there is a first and last name of a person you are interested in. Using them, you can search for a person’s profiles on other social networks. To do this, try entering your first and last name in the Yandex People Search service (people.yandex.ru). There you can specify other parameters that clarify your identity.
FindFace service
If you have a photo of a person, you can use the well-known FindFace service (https://findface.ru), which now also searches for profiles on Twitter. This service is designed for facial recognition: in it you can, for example, find a person based on a photo you took on the street.
This means that if two VK and Twitter profiles have the same person (even if the photos are different), then using the photo from one profile you can find the second profile.
Google Image Search
You can do a Google image search: If there's a picture that you think could serve as an avatar for that person somewhere else, you can do an image search: You'll find that person on another site. Perhaps another site will have more open information about the user.
The difference with FindFace is that FindFace searches for similar photos, but only on VK and Twitter. And a search on Google is carried out everywhere on the Internet, but only identical pictures are found (exactly), there is no smart facial recognition here. Similar images are also shown on Google, but the similarity is determined by color, shape, etc., and not by the face. On Google, you can only hope to find an identical avatar on another site.
So, for a Google image search:
- In the Chrome browser, right-click the photo (or image) and select "Find Image (Google)." The same pictures will be found on the Internet on other sites (if they exist and are not blocked from indexing).
Google Image Search - If you are in another browser (not Chrome), then there will be no search menu item, only the “Copy link address” or “Copy link” item. Copy the photo address.
- Go to the image search engine www.google.com/imghp?hl=ru.
- Click the photo icon in the search bar and enter the link to the photo you want to find.
Search by image
Search by image Yandex
Similarly, you can search by image in Yandex.
- Go to https://yandex.ru/images.
- Click the Search by Image icon.
- Enter the address of the user's photo or upload a saved photo from your computer.
- You will receive a list of the same and similar photos.
Facebook people search service
There is also an interesting service for searching and tracking people on Facebook. This service searches for all comments from a specific user, photos in which they are tagged, and much more. Facebook's built-in search is very limited, but the service helps you get around the restrictions.
Search engine Nigma
Sometimes the Nigma search engine (nigma.ru) returns profiles that are not found in Yandex. Although it seems to be a secondary system that does not use its own algorithms. However, I found on the first page something that Yandex did not provide. Try it, you might come across something interesting. Just enter your first and last name in the search bar. You can try entering the person's nickname, if you have one.
Classic methods through search engines
Popular search engines have a built-in image search function. The procedure is not much different from standard use of the service.
Searching for an image in Google is performed in several steps. But you should be prepared for the fact that the “machine” produces results based not only on the image, but also on its name.
The algorithm is as follows:
- Open Google https://images.google.com.
- Click on the camera icon in the search bar.
- Enter the image address or upload it to the system from a personal device.
- Confirm the action with the Enter key.
- In the photo window, click on the “All sizes” line.
Now the user is only a short distance away from access to all options and resolutions of the existing image.
The algorithm will also allow you to navigate to similar images. The function works especially well when using photos of famous people. But finding all the images of an unknown person is much more difficult. The system also provides results based on words associated with the picture.
It is quite possible to use Google search if you have the desired image in hand. To do this, just right-click on the photo and select “Find image (Google).”
Yandex
The second most popular search engine in Russia also has a built-in image search function.
To use this extension:
- Open the link https://yandex.by/images/, and click on the camera icon.
- Specify the image address or download it from the gadget’s memory.
As a result, the user will have access to all similar pictures and the sites on which they are posted. The search principle is not particularly different from Google.
