I have no coding experience but one class in Pascal! I want to know about tracking beacons in images please.

1    18 Jun 2018 17:15 by u/24601_JeanValJean

Hey, I do a lot of photo retouching for fun and post them occasionally, here and there. I would love to be able to see what happens to them online viz-a-viz, downloaded and reposted, etc. My big crazy question is: Can I write a small program (with help of course) that would create a tracking pixel to embed in an image? I've looked online and have seen this is readily available for business solutions (node.js for example) but I can't find anything about a single use tracking beacon. I realize I'm way over-the-top here and completely out of my element...is this possible? Too difficult for a newbie that knows little about programing and coding? Not really possible?

10 comments

0 u/RedditIsTheBest111 18 Jun 2018 17:37

can you not find books on the subject?

0 u/24601_JeanValJean [OP] 18 Jun 2018 17:47

aw gee, thanks for the help!

0 u/RedditIsTheBest111 18 Jun 2018 17:49

so you did? I find your question intriguing and would appreciate suggestions. sorry I'm not a expert on the subject either.

0 u/24601_JeanValJean [OP] 21 Jun 2018 17:44

@3dk offers some really great jumping off places:

I'm a noob too, but this is how I would start my search to automate adding invisible digital watermarks to images:

https://www.startpage.com/do/search?q=add+watermark+invisibly

https://www.startpage.com/do/search?q=automate+image+manipulation+python

https://www.startpage.com/do/search?q=Add+watermark+python

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_applications#Image_processing

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_applications#Raster_graphics_editors

0 u/avgwhtguy1 18 Jun 2018 18:52

try google

0 u/3dk 18 Jun 2018 21:40

I'm a noob too, but this is how I would start my search to automate adding invisible digital watermarks to images:

https://www.startpage.com/do/search?q=add+watermark+invisibly

https://www.startpage.com/do/search?q=automate+image+manipulation+python

https://www.startpage.com/do/search?q=Add+watermark+python

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_applications#Image_processing

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_applications#Raster_graphics_editors

1 u/24601_JeanValJean [OP] 21 Jun 2018 17:39

Thank you, this is fantastic and super informative.

0 u/sore_ass_losers 19 Jun 2018 00:56

AFAIK a tracking single pixel image is something that's part of webpage HTML, not an image. The single pixel image is not apparent to the user, yet his browser hits some server to get it, hence tracking hits.

0 u/psimonster 21 Jun 2018 15:03

One delivers a tracking pixel in an HTML email with a special image tag. The source field of the image tag can contain, in addition to the location of the image, parameters which the email sender can use to identify the email address and message. For example:

<img src="https://cdn.example.com/images/foo.jpg?id=1092741abcd097324091>

The image location will appear in the server logs. You can analyze the logs to see which email addresses saw which images.

Alternatively, one can set the source field to a script instead of an image. The script could process the parameters in whatever way desired before serving the image to the email client.

0 u/Apokil 25 Jul 2018 11:55

I think you can get some help for offshore developers, if you need it.