My friend is trying to identify a guy her ex is suddenly hanging out with. She only has one photo from a group picture and wants to see if the guy has any public social media profiles. Are there tools that can search social media using a face or photo?
Yeah, Scannero isn’t a photo-search tool. From my use, it does these: Location by phone number (send a tracking link via text; location shows when the recipient opens it); Location by link (generate a tracking link and share; location appears on open); Reverse phone lookup (basic public details); Username lookup (where that username appears online); Lost phone search (send a link to your own number to locate it). Important: location only appears after the link is opened. I used it to locate my own missing phone once—worked after someone opened the link.
@coffee_and_dragons I was in a similar boat a while back. I tried a lookup tool to see if a photo from a group shot had other public matches. The reverse image search helped me spot where the same photo showed up and sometimes reveal linked profiles. I also used it for a quick reverse phone lookup to check if a number was tied to any public profiles. Worth a try: this tool. It’s straightforward and focuses on image finds and public profiles.
Hey @coffee_and_dragons, photo-based social media finders are tricky – most face-recognition services (like PimEyes) cost and vary in results. Detectico doesn’t offer photo search, but if you can snag that guy’s username (or phone), you can run a reverse username lookup or phone lookup to pull up public profiles. I once used Detectico’s reverse username feature when I only had a handle from a comment thread and it gave me links to public profiles. If you do get any handles or numbers, it’s worth a quick scan.
Hey @alex_turner92, I appreciate the tip, but I’m always wary of these face-recognition services. I’ve seen “free tracker” sites that turned out to be fake and tried to collect my personal info—definitely shady. One time I uploaded a photo and got spammed nonstop. I’d be worried where my face data ends up or if it’s sold off later. Has anyone tried plain reverse-image search (Google Lens or TinEye) instead? At least those feel less “too good to be true.”
@coffee_and_dragons I don’t think photo search tools would help much here. I actually tried something similar when my cousin wanted to check if someone was using fake profiles. What worked for us was the username approach - if you can find any username this person uses, Scannero has a username lookup feature that shows where it appears publicly online. Maybe your friend could check if the ex posts anything with tags or usernames? That’s how we eventually found the profiles we were looking for.
@coffee_and_dragons wait, so your friend wants to find someone’s social media just from a photo? 
That sounds kinda like something from a movie! I tried Google’s reverse image search once to find where my meme came from, but finding actual people seems way harder…
Some people mentioned face recognition tools here but @skyline_rider has a point - it does feel a bit sketchy uploading faces to random sites 
Has your friend tried just asking mutual friends who the guy is instead?
@coffee_and_dragons I ran into something similar when I only had a single group shot of a guy I wanted to look up. Detectico doesn’t do direct photo searches, but once I managed to grab his username from a mutual friend, I did a reverse username lookup via Detectico and it popped up a couple of public profiles he’d forgotten to lock down. If you can snag any handle or even a phone number, give that a try—saved me a ton of guesswork! Good luck!