The Internet: The risks involved in searching for images

I won't beat about the bush. Many people use the internet to obtain all sorts of images and there are many search engines and image hosting sites available. Google, Yahoo and Bing are very popular and can locate thousand of images very quickly. The images may not match your requirements and some will carry a copyright warning, but you will usually find something to meet your needs.


What many computer users do not realise, however, is that the moment you send your search term to the site, dozens of images pour into your hard drive and stay there until they are wiped off or are overwritten by new material. Let me demonstrate this with a search on Google Images for an image of USA President Obama. The search engine produces a page and of images reports that there are over half a million images related to the search term ‘obama'.


Scrolling down the page reveals a large number of images all related to President Obama, including a few that are not too complimentary! Even if you choose not to download one or more of these images, they are already sitting on your hard drive in case you decide to do so at a later stage. This ensures that they will load quickly.

Now search your hard drive using software designed to recover any images which have been saved but accidentally deleted. As you scroll down the display of images which the program can recover, you will see over 250 images of President Obama. Unless you are a particular admirer of the President, the only reason they are there is because you searched for his image, and they will stay there until you wipe them with hard drive cleaning software or the computer overwrites the space they occupy with other images. Cleaning your cache will not remove the images, just the reference data about them

So far, there is very little risk involved in searching for images of the President of the United States, but the next example illustrates the problems that can arise from the most unexpected topics. A friend of mine was bitten by a scorpion as a child and told one of his grandsons about it. Obviously, it was not a fatal bite and the boy wanted to know what a killer scorpion would look like and how large it would be. Turning to the internet, my friend entered the search term ‘killer scorpions'. The image search responded with a display of rather menacing looking creatures, the exhaust of a Honda motorbike, and images of a naked young girl in a sexually provocative pose. Scrolling through array of images, there were almost as many images of this young girl as there were scorpions. Her presence on this search is explained by the fact that she had been used to illustrate the front of a record album by a group called the Scorpions.

Later, when this search was repeated on another computer and the hard drive inspected using the software mentioned earlier, over one hundred images of the girl were discovered. Legally, these would be classified as indecent images of a child and the computer user could be prosecuted for possessing them. However, the Internet Watch Foundation and other authorities who monitor the net for this kind of material have abandoned attempts to ban the images and prosecute those who possess them because of the length of time the images have existed and their wide availability.

Most image searching systems offer an option called ‘safe searching' and this usually operates as the default setting. Apart from the avoidance of adult sites, it is not clear how a system decides that a particular image is suspect and must be blocked. For example, on Google the search term ‘fat ladies' will produce exactly that. On Bing, however, no search is possible until the user removes the ‘safe search' option only to be confronted by a considerable amount of pornography. Don't rely on ‘safe search'

There are many terms which can give rise to ambiguities. Pageant, for example, has a rather different meaning in Europe and the image searcher in, for example, the UK will not normally expect to be confronted with gaggles of little girls dressed like hookers. Similarly, a budding chef wishing to examine images of a delicious bombe surprise will certainly get a surprise when confronted with images detailing the contents and workings of an individual explosive device.


In the brave new world of the 21st century, internet surveillance and monitoring of personal communications by government and other organisations is widespread. Indeed, almost all internet traffic is closely monitored for clues of illegal activity. No matter how innocent your use of the internet, you could find yourself subjected to a dawn raid and your computer seized for investigation. Just suppose that you had sent an email to a friend, and inadvertently included some sensitive words which rang bells and aroused the suspicion of internet monitors at Big Brother house. Your computers, cameras and memory cards could be seized and held for many months and your access to important family documentation and financial records will be denied. You are going to be in big trouble if certain kinds of images are found on your hard drive; images which you may never have seen and certainly not downloaded. You may even end up being prosecuted and your equipment destroyed. This is not a fantasy; it has actually happened to many innocent people. They may have proved their innocence eventually, but at considerable cost to their finances, reputation and freedom.


To ensure that you are not stacking up inappropriate images on your computer, always use the private browsing facility on your browser (if available), invest in some drive cleaning software and use it on a regular basis. And always think about that search term before you press Go.