A report by The New York Times recently revealed the ordeal that Kodye Elise, a Tik Tok star, went through to remove her young daughter from the public screen.
In 2020, he posted a video of the girl dancing that got millions of views. Some time later, images of the little girl were on other networks, sometimes accompanied by comments that the tiktoker called “creepy”.
From there he began a thorny journey to erase all that was left of his three children in digital infinity.
Among other things, he had to subscribe to a service to get one of the images removed, detected by an image search engine among the audience at a football match on a newspaper’s website.
In the same report (and in many others in recent months) it is warned how cybercrime is using AI to combine these images stolen from the networks with voice theft (in calls where they make you speak under any pretext) to make kidnapping blackmail: A woman told the New York Times how a caller demanded money in exchange for her 15-year-old daughter, who was screaming (tortured or whatever) next to the caller. But luckily, at that time the girl was at home, sleeping.
In this scenario, Kodye Elise recommends self-tracking to know which images of yourself are swarming around the networks.
There are at least two free tools, Facecheck and Pimeyes. I try the first one. You have to drag your own photo into a box. Facecheck finds a fortnight of Ignacios Orovio… Only one is me. And it says there’s an 86% chance it’s me. An 86??
There’s more: it turns out that there’s a 55% chance it’s this guy who appears involved in a complaint for “armed uprising, genocide and coup d’état” in Bolivia (It’s not me! And I don’t look like it!) Not even 1%!); that there is a 49% chance that it will be such an HR. (from a biological and hunting research institute in Austria – interesting – completely bald); and adds that with 48% certainty I am this member of the Parliament of Zurich (with Spanish surnames, of course, but eight years younger) (thank you).
I test Pimeyes, and it’s much more effective: it finds eight real photos of me (most of which I had no idea existed online) and two that aren’t me. I think so, but I’m not. But there are only two of them (and they are not coup plotters).
I hear Kodye Elise’s voice. I insert a photo of my son, 12 years old… horror.
My account is blocked “due to a possible violation of our company policy”. The message says that their monitoring systems have “detected” that I have been “involved in activities related to the search of minors”… which is absolutely true…
They add that my account is “under review” and that depending on the outcome “you may be reported to the relevant authorities for further action”. They offer me to contact their support team, although – they warn – “the chances of restoring your account are extremely low for serious violations like this”.
I write an exculpatory email in three seconds. Minutes pass, sweat, silence. They call the intercom. I think it can only be the FBI.