MetaChat - Stolen Camera Finder

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06 May 2011

Stolen Camera Finder uses one of your photos to read the serial number of your camera, then searches the web to see if anyone else is posting photos taken with your camera.

post by: BoringPostcards at: 07:46 | 15 comments

I have had two stolen . .when I get to work this morning, I am going to give this a try.

posted by danf 06 May | 08:03

Wow, that is incredible!

posted by LoriFLA 06 May | 08:10

What a great example of an innovative yet simple idea. This should come as a service from the manufacturers. Give it time, I suppose.

posted by Ardiril 06 May | 08:28

That's brilliant.

Noone's posted anything with my recently lost camera though.

posted by gaspode 06 May | 09:33

Site seems to be down, now.

posted by danf 06 May | 09:54

Looks like it's working now.

posted by BoringPostcards 06 May | 10:24

Not now. . .

posted by danf 06 May | 12:39

The problem must be at your end, danf... still loads fine for me here.

posted by BoringPostcards 06 May | 12:54

That is strange.. .I rebooted, and if a site is questionable, it runs into my employer's filter, which blocks the Onion and Esquire Magazine but still allows for some pretty unspeakably dirty stuff to get through. But this one just times out.

I'll try it again at home. . .I have fantasies of JPEG Justice, although I would hopefully never actually follow up on them. . .

posted by danf 06 May | 13:11

Cool! I think this would also work for stolen pictures?

posted by moonshine 06 May | 13:31

Caveat: Some cameras don't embed their serial numbers in the exif data. Apparently our older Samsung doesn't, as I got a big "FAIL" when I tried the site out. Here's the list of cameras the website supports.

posted by Thorzdad 06 May | 16:59

I am on an xp box here at work. . how do I drag and drop a pic from photoshop, paintshop pro, of flickr?

posted by danf 06 May | 17:07

Write the file to disk and then you can drag the file from windows explorer...

posted by DarkForest 06 May | 17:11

Maybe it's the way my mind works, but I immediately have a privacy concern.

This presumably means anyone who can see any photo you've posted anywhere can also potentially find everything else you've posted anywhere.

Maybe not so good.

posted by philipy 06 May | 17:58

Anyway... turns out none of the several images I just tried with it worked. The reasons varied.. the camera doesn't record the data, the pic has been subsequently been cropped in Photoshop etc etc.

posted by philipy 06 May | 18:06

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