REDMOND, Wash. — Facebook is teaming up with Microsoft and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to scan for child porn online and images of missing children.
The social network giant will use photo-fingerprint technology called Microsoft PhotoDNA to search for pictures matching those in the center’s data base.
Tim Henning, ASACP’s interim director, told XBIZ that this technology began a few years ago with a data base of child pornography images, including those provided by ASACP’s reporting hotline.
“Today this technology has evolved into something much more sophisticated where images can be matched even if they have been altered digitally by recognizing similar patterns within the images themselves,” Henning said.
“This tool has already been very successful in locating child pornography images stored in a universe of data that is the Internet. As more ISP's and ESP's start to use the technology, provided by Microsoft and NCMEC, we will see increasingly impressive results, which will greatly benefit child protection efforts.”
Microsoft PhotoDNA technology is currently being used at search engine Bing and online file storage service SkyDrive. The technology has already evaluated more than 2 billion digital pictures at Microsoft services, finding 1,000 matches on SkyDrive and 1,500 matches through Bing image indexing.