Does anyone know what this website is and why it has mermaid pictures?

[Mermaid Danielle]

I came across this website "metanetworks.org" while going through some of my images on the google search engine. I found a ton of my photos on the site, and quite a few others for mermaids like Raina, Mermaid Hannah, Mermaid Melissa, and Mermaid Iona (just a few names that came first to my mind). The pictures all have links to the original posting sites but I wasn't sure what to make of it. Is this some type of new search engine? There are tons of photos from all different categories, but when I searched it on google and linked-in, the company is listed as a software company.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks, best wishes!

[Trade Winds]

Looks like one of those sites that just collects images from the web...spammy sort of place. I wouldn't worry about it. Wouldn't recommend anyone trying to go there unless you got adblocker and a good antivirus. I typed the website in and I got a bunch of art gallery pictures. Once you put pictures online anybody can get them so that's just the way it is and why/how mer pix got there

[the.tattooed.mermaid78]

My hubby googled me the other week and found loads of pictures of me and the dogs gets on different web sites. One site is called insta-stalker.com. it's really scary. My full address is on there etc. I'm quite freaked out but dont know how to get rid of it all

Sent from my [device_name] using MerNetwork mobile app

[tealmermaid]

Looks like an image aggregator.

If you have your own domain(s), set up your htaccess file to deny access to that domain (and any others like it that you may find), then deny access to any site besides yours that is attempting to access any image file types that you have.

[the.tattooed.mermaid78]

I'm really not technical like that lol

Sent from my [device_name] using MerNetwork mobile app

[fabianfrz]

Maybe a robots file helps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard

If not, you can only stop a crawler by request limiting / throttling but that may impact your SEO, since all paramerters except the source IP are simple to manipulate.
You can also watermark your images so the are at least not as interesting as without.

[deepblue]

My hubby googled me the other week and found loads of pictures of me and the dogs gets on different web sites. One site is called insta-stalker.com. it's really scary. My full address is on there etc. I'm quite freaked out but dont know how to get rid of it all

Sent from my [device_name] using MerNetwork mobile app

Many sites like this that pull data from all over have a removal policy. Insta-stalker has one, which I found here:

https://insta-stalker.com/contact/

Insta Stalker Team
Send a message about any topic. We will contact you.
To permanently remove your account on search engines, please send your request as message to us with your username for Instagram.
E-mail: instastalkercom@gmail.com
Thank you.

[the.tattooed.mermaid78]

Done thanks

Sent from my [device_name] using MerNetwork mobile app

[tealmermaid]

Maybe a robots file helps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard

If not, you can only stop a crawler by request limiting / throttling but that may impact your SEO, since all paramerters except the source IP are simple to manipulate.
You can also watermark your images so the are at least not as interesting as without.

That's assuming that it's a nice crawler that obeys the robots.txt file. For sites such as that, they don't normally obey so they need to be blocked at the domain level (which you can't do on social media accounts, obviously, because it's not your domain).

Watermarking may or may not stop them from aggregating your images, depending on the site. You can also look into locking down your account better (maybe with a password?) to keep the bots, crawlers, and other undesirables out.

Short version: if you don't have the means to block these sites, you probably should not post your photos or personal info online.

[the.tattooed.mermaid78]

I dont post my personal info to anything not even facebook. I dont understand all this stuff at all.


Sent from my [device_name] using MerNetwork mobile app