Every investigator knows how challenging it can be to collect evidence and information online. Especially downloading and viewing images, and extracting hidden data from those images. To solve this problem, we’ve designed a new way of handling images online that will help you save lots of time – and possibly, frustration.

One of the most time-consuming parts of any online investigation is to browse websites looking for images, downloading those images to the computer, and then importing them into a specific program or third-party website to extract hidden data.  

Well, to cut out some of these frustrating steps and get more intelligence out of images in a quicker and simpler way, we’ve designed what we call Smart Images.

Smart Images directly in the browser with associated data

Simply put, Smart Images allows you to see images with the hidden metadata (EXIF data) directly in the browser. By just looking at the overview in the browser you’ll be able to see whether hidden data is available or not. We think this is pretty amazing.

The images show up as thumbnails and the hidden data is listed below the image. You can view all the available information just by hovering over the image. There’s no need to save or process the image in any way – the information is just there for you to see and evaluate if it is of further interest.

If an image proves to have relevant information, just collect it with a simple drag and drop into your image collection in Paliscope (and for the record, you can collect all types of images, even if it has some sort of download prevention!)

A smarter way of working

Having images and information organized like this online will save anyone working on an investigation from downloading content and see what data is available. There’s no longer a need for external software or web service to extract hidden data from images. Now you can get it in seconds.  

Dragging the images into Paliscope directly from the browser will also help save time and speed up the efficiency of the case.

Smart Images in image collection view

Another new functionality is the Image Collection in Paliscope. With the click of a button you can now choose to view all images at the same time, and the function of Smart Images will, of course, be activated here as well. This makes it possible to swiftly compare images and data, and find links between them.

In the image collection view, you’ll also be able to see even more detailed information. One example is an interactive map where location data is triangulated and visualized. This provides a direct starting point to an even deeper search, based on other various parameters contained in the image data. And as with all intelligence in Paliscope the source IP, URLs, and timestamp are recorded automatically. 

The Paliscope report includes the data collected

Finally, when the case has been prepared and the evidence needs to be presented, Paliscope can produce a report showing all the images with the hidden data added to the report. Without Paliscope this is very time-consuming, as the only other way is to add images and data manually to a report. With Paliscope this happens automatically as soon as an image is selected to be included in the report. 

Find out more about the Paliscope report here