The bad news: Never before have there been as many hoaxes and false reports as there are today - from crazy rumors on Facebook to professionally staged fakes.

The media repeatedly falls for fakes. But the good news: Most ducks are easy to kill with the appropriate know-how and various online tools. Today I'll introduce you to the best verification strategies for photos and videos.

Lecturer_Oliver_Klein

Oliver Klein, Mimikama guest author

1. Verification via reverse search

Where does a photo or video come from that is supposed to prove an alleged scandal or an unbelievable story? How long has it been online? A simple reverse image search can often prove that a photo is in a different context than the one claimed or is older than stated. That's why the first and best place to verify photos is usually Google . If you click on the camera symbol in the search window, you can upload any photo or enter the URL of a photo. Google then calculates a digital fingerprint of the image and compares it with millions of other known images. Pages that also contain the image appear in the search results. The big advantage: With Google, all operators and options for restrictions (e.g. to a specific domain or top-level domain) can also be used for reverse image searches. A time restriction can be used to limit the time when a photo first appeared on the Internet. Attention: When searching with mobile devices, the camera symbol is not initially displayed in the image search. Here you have to take a small detour: Either surf with Chrome - if you tap on an image for a long time, the option to search for the image backwards with Google appears. Or go directly to the image search on Google and then select “Show desktop version” in the browser settings. The camera symbol then also appears when used with a cell phone or tablet

No results?

Then just try alternatives:

Bing  – just finding the reverse search for images is an imposition; You first have to click on “Images”, then start some search, only then does the well-known camera symbol appear in the search field. If it's too complicated for you - here is the direct link . The quality of the hits is… well. But at least Bing offers an option that I've been missing from Google for a long time: searching with an image section. Simply click on “search within this image” at the top right of the photo and determine the section. In this way, specific buildings, people, signs, etc. can be identified without having to manually save new sections of a photo for a reverse search.

Excerpt search with Bing: The excerpt finds the famous Ramsau Church in Berchtesgadener Land.
Excerpt search with Bing: The excerpt finds the famous Ramsau Church in Berchtesgadener Land.

Tineye is one of the oldest reverse search engines. It usually provides fewer hits than Google and does not display similar images, but only searches for the exact image provided; At most, other excerpts are displayed as hits. However, sorting according to the oldest and newest find, image size and “best match” is practical.

Yandex – a Russian search engine that actually works much better when it comes to image searches for non-English-language websites. In many tests I conducted, Yandex actually delivered better results than Google when doing reverse searches.

Still no results?

Try flipping the photo horizontally! The site flipapicture . Some fakers try to change a photo so that it cannot be easily found with a reverse search by mirroring the image, changing the crop or varying colors.

What… Still no results?!

When it comes to verifying photos or videos, the motto is often helpful: Think like the faker to uncover fakes! Because most counterfeiters take the first image from Google's search results that fits their fake story. Therefore, a suitable strategy turned out to be: ask yourself the question “What was the faker looking for?” If you search like a photo forger, you will often find the ingredients for the fake image. Particularly clever counterfeiters look for photos from sources that are not or only partially indexed by search engines. An example of this: The fake GDR poster - supposedly the CDU stole its election campaign slogan “For a Germany in which we live well and happily” from the SED.

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Verification using the “Think like a faker” method – a search for “DDR propaganda” in the photo community Flickr reveals the original photo of the fake election poster, in color and with a completely different slogan

By the way: In principle, a reverse search also works for videos, but you need screenshots for this. Amnesty YouTube data viewer allows such a reverse search automatically for YouTube videos: Simply enter a video address and the preview images are linked to the Google reverse image search.

2. Verification via metadata

Many images reveal more than we see at first glance: who took a photo, when, where, with which camera, and was the image subsequently edited? Such information is revealed by the so-called Exif data (“Exchangeable Image File Format”), which can be viewed with tools such as “ Jeffrey's Exif Viewer ”. But be careful: Not all photos contain Exif data, especially social networks such as Facebook or Twitter and many news portals delete such information by default when published. It is therefore helpful to trace the image under review as close as possible to its origin. This is where Google's time limit for reverse image searches helps. Versions of the photo often come to light that contain additional metadata.

3. Verification via photo forensics

Is this photo the original? Did fakers change the image, add individual parts or retouch them? Sites like fotoforensics or forensically examine image material using “error level analysis” (ELA). Parts of the image that may have been manipulated appear lighter or darker. Forensically also offers a number of other analysis options, for example “clone detection”, which allows you to make cloned areas visible in an image.

4. Check plausibility

Can a photo or video have been taken at the specified time and place?

Where was a photo or video taken?

In order to verify the location of a photo or video, it is regularly possible to compare buildings, streets, landscape features, etc. using Google Earth Pro or Google Maps. The satellite view is particularly helpful, especially if there are 3D animated city shots on Google. Alternatively, you can check Bing to see if there are any more bird's eye views. In addition, in most regions you can display photos on Google Maps that have been posted by other users: To do this, drag the yellow man on the map at the bottom right and any existing photos as well as the available Google Street View views will be displayed as blue markers . Alternatively, you can click on the two black arrows (“Show images”). Attention: There must not be a location to search in the search field.

The images from Google Street View in particular can be of great help; in many cases there are even images from different points in time in cities outside of Germany. Just pay attention to the little “time machine” at the top left:

Google Street View time machine using Malaga as an example: There are two photos here, from 2009 (without the Ferris wheel) and from 2016.
Google Street View time machine using Malaga as an example: There are two photos here, from 2009 (without the Ferris wheel) and from 2016.

Tip: If only one recording date is displayed, simply scroll up and down the street, more recordings will often be added (unfortunately this does not work for German cities). Even more images for comparison can be found at Mapillary , Picasa, Twitter and Flickr (with the advanced search); Information about locations can be found at Wikimapia . An exciting tool for locating a place is Geolocatethis: Using Google Maps, for example, the site is able to find certain facilities and objects (e.g. shops, traffic lights, bus stops) on a map that are within a certain radius of another object away. Example: Bus stops that are no more than 20 meters from a pharmacy. So if you have a photo that shows both and you suspect that the photo could have been taken in Berlin, you can use the tool to find a number of possible locations.

When was a photo or video taken?

The question of whether the time of recording is correct can also be checked using simple strategies. First, you can try to find out with a reverse search whether the same photo or video has already existed at an earlier point in time - the date restriction on Google or the YouTube Data Viewer , which even shows the exact upload time of a YouTube -View videos.

Is it a photo or video intended to document a specific incident? Reports or even additional photos or films can be found for many events in social networks using the appropriate hashtag search and, if necessary, with a date restriction. Even details that seem inconspicuous at first glance are often valuable clues as to the possible date of recording: For street views, for example, you can compare the images from Google Streetview to see when a particular sign is first seen on a street and whether a house has been converted or renovated etc. Some tools provide historical weather data: timeanddate.de - simply enter a city and then click on “Weather Review”. However, the archive only goes back to 2009, and some cities are only incompletely recorded. The search engine Wolfram Alpha provides global historical weather data - simply enter a location, a date and the keyword “Weather”. For example, it can then be determined that the photo with the cloudless sky could not have been taken at the specified time - because it rained all day in the same place. The position of the sun is also a valuable indication of both the date (how long is the shadow cast by buildings, trees, etc.?) and the time of day. When the sun was or is where in the sky can be calculated with suncalc :

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With suncalc.org you can roughly calculate the time at which a photo was taken. If the length of an object's shadow is known, you can even determine the approximate period of the year.

Lecturer_Oliver_Klein

Oliver Klein, Mimikama guest author,
editor and research expert Klein gives seminars for journalists and investigators on the topic of investigative online research; One of the most important topics is of course verification (in addition to Google tricks, graph search, area search in social networks, etc.). You can find out more about his work at http://rechercheseminar.de

 

Cover image: SFIO CRACH / Shutterstock.com


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )