The Firearm Blog, TFB is posting a story that indicates both google and facebook are indexing serial numbers on firearms in images posted in social media. If you post such on social media or maybe using google products, you might want to blur it out. Go and buy a standalone camera instead of feeding the Googleplex if that is an issue and scrape all of the photo id metadata from it before posting.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2019/10/22/google-firearm-serial-numbers/
They did a simple serial number search in the google box brought up pictures of the firearm that had been posted online. For those of you active doing such, you might want to do the same for any posted pix.
Apparently both Google and Facebook are indexing images using OCR recognition software of car photos with indexing by license plates according to Jalopnik https://jalopnik.com/google-is-reading-your-license-plates-1839259494
Earlier TFB post indicating why they did not fear pictures of their serial numbers of items online. https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2019/03/13/should-you-blur-serial-number/
Given the latest data, I would call that statement inoperative.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2019/10/22/google-firearm-serial-numbers/
They did a simple serial number search in the google box brought up pictures of the firearm that had been posted online. For those of you active doing such, you might want to do the same for any posted pix.
Apparently both Google and Facebook are indexing images using OCR recognition software of car photos with indexing by license plates according to Jalopnik https://jalopnik.com/google-is-reading-your-license-plates-1839259494
Earlier TFB post indicating why they did not fear pictures of their serial numbers of items online. https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2019/03/13/should-you-blur-serial-number/
Given the latest data, I would call that statement inoperative.