SurfSafe Browser Extension Finds Fake News

Launching today, SurfSafe is a Chrome browser extension that fights fake news by identifying images that have been altered (via Wired).

[Safari: How to Check for Malicious Extensions]

SurfSafe

SurfSafe lets anyone use their mouse to hover over any image they find on the web. It doesn’t matter if it’s on Facebook, Google, or The Mac Observer. The extension, which unfortunately is only on Chrome, instantly checks the photo against face-checking websites like Snopes, as well as over 100 trusted news sites.

Image of SurfSafe website.

It works by storing a unique digital fingerprint for every photo found on these trusted sites. It also saves a signature of every photo you see while you browse with the extension installed (It’s probably going to get a lot of porn).

When you hover over a photo, SurfSafe scans its database of fingerprints to see if it has encountered that photo in its original or altered form. You can then flag that photo as propaganda, Photoshopped, or misleading. A flaw of course is that if it has never encountered a photo before, it can’t find database matches even if it truly is fake. But the more images it comes across, the better it will get.

[Apple Moves Some Safari Extensions to Mac App Store]

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