Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has refined their technology called PhotoDNA to help identify and flag child pornography images even if the photos/videos are cropped or altered. PhotoDNA can search through large amounts of data quickly. Facebook is now integrating Microsoft PhotoDNA into the social network. Microsoft had donated this technology to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in December 2009.
About 200 million images are uploaded by Facebook users per day. Facebook will use PhotoDNA to hunt for illegal images that are uploaded. Dartmouth University computer science professor Hany Farid worked closely with Microsoft to develop PhotoDNA. Tests on Microsoft properties reveals that PhotoDNA works 99.7% of the time.
“We’re very passionate about PhotoDNA because we’ve seen it work,” stated Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith. “We invented it through Microsoft research, and we are trying to give it away free, including to our competitors.”
[NYT]