Those who first encountered “Skotobaza” will be unpleasantly surprised or even outraged - this is the repulsive name given to the site that stores millions of private photos of VKontakte users. What this resource hides within itself and whether it is possible to obtain access to its base - further.
What is "Skotobaza"
The "Skotobaza" resource, which has collected about 107 million incriminating photos of users on its servers, is far from innovative. Even 15 years ago, LiveJournal began publishing “for fun” frankly unsuccessful photos posted by users. "Skotobaza" was guided (yes, precisely in the past tense - today the site cannot be found in a search engine, since it is closed by Rospotrebnadzor) on the content of the social network "Vkontakte".
It should be noted right away: if you have posted a photo in an album with a lock “Visible only to me”, such an image cannot appear in the “Animal Depot”. But if you sent the image to your interlocutor, to a closed community, to a photo album visible only to friends or a limited group of people, then it is possible that it was already in the domain of this dubious resource.
Many, having learned what “Skotobaza” is, resorted to this resource to find out something personal about their friends, enemies, ill-wishers, and to check on their soul mate. The site, it must be said, skillfully profited from careless users who sent too personal photos to whomever they didn’t need and where they didn’t need it. For a bribe of 490 rubles, you could not only permanently remove your photos from the Animal Farm archives, but also get some kind of guarantee that you would no longer appear on this resource.
"Skotobaza": analogues
As already mentioned, the site was closed for obvious reasons. "Skotobaza" tried to recover by moving to other domains, but in vain - access to them was also blocked. The resource does not have a “mirror” either.
To some extent, the analogue of the site was a similar resource “Burn”, but it is also no longer operational. The same fate befell the smaller copy of Poiskvk. Of course, if you “surf” in Odnoklassniki, Vkontakte, Instagram, Facebook, you can find closed groups and communities where users post personal and failed photos of their random interlocutors and acquaintances (the same ones once popular groups"Hens" and "Roosters" in every city).
Naturally, a resource of the scale of the Animal Farm will not appear instantly - it will take a lot of time, at least to accumulate such an archive.
Bypassing the "Skotobaza" blocking
After access to the resource was blocked, many lifehacks like "Skotobaza" appeared on the network: bypassing the blocking." It is believed that it is possible to see the photo database by hiding your IP address, that is, the location of yourself and your gadget, since Rospotrebnadzor is authorized to block access only to Russians.This can be done in two simple ways:
- Through the Opera browser, versions no older than September 2016. This development is good because it has a built-in VPN - private virtual network, which allows you not to advertise the actions of the PC owner trying to get to the Livestock Depot website. The bypass is done like this: go to “Settings” (this can be done by pressing the “CTRL+F12” buttons), find “Security”, and in it the “VPN” section. Activate the mode and try to search for the scandalous resource.
- Through anonymizer sites. Click, if necessary, “Hide me” and enter: skotobaza.org. The resource should redirect you to the address. There is a drawback, and it is the following: it is not so easy to find a free anonymizer on the Internet in order to get into the archive of the Livestock Depot site.
Bypassing the blocking in this way can be quickly done using these operations.
How to use "Skotobaza"
Having learned about "Skotobaza", many will want to check whether they themselves or their relatives and friends have appeared on this resource. This is very simple to do: enter the desired VKontakte user ID in the window on the main page. If he is present in this dubious database, the system will redirect you to his photo archive.
If you believe the words of some users, then in 2017 it became impossible to go to the “Skotobaza”, since its creators deleted the resource, which, apparently, no longer brings them the same profit.
How else can you find a user's photo?
Having found out what a “Skotobaza” is, you will probably want to use less dubious services to find a person and his photo:
- Yandex.People system: enter your first and last name into the search engine.
- Find Face service: people are searched by photo - the system recognizes the face in the image and offers profiles of similar people in in social networks.
- Search by image in Google (right-click on the photo - “Search image in Google”): the system will search for a similar image not only in social networks, but throughout the entire Web. If the photo is not on the Internet, then drag its icon into your browser window and start searching.
- Similarly, you can use Yandex’s “Search by Image”: click on the camera icon next to the main line.
- Intellectual "Nigma.Ru", using the results of both Google and Yandex.
What is "Skotobaza" in a nutshell - a scandalous resource that has accumulated a large collection of private photos of VK users. If you want to find a person or photo on the Internet, it is much more advisable to use authorized search engines to do this.
There are services on the Internet that store information about social network users. One of these services is the Skotobaza website. On this site you can find photos hidden from social network users. There are more than 107 million photos of people on the servers.
VKontakte is the most popular social network in the CIS countries. VKontakte users post photos on open access. But there is an option to hide a photo from public access. If the photo is completely private, then it will not be available in the Animal Farm service. The risk group includes materials that are restricted to a narrow circle of people. For example, photographs for classmates, friends and relatives.
On this moment By decision of Roskomnadzor, the site is closed. But there are ways to bypass the blocking.
What is Skotobaza?
This site carries out search for hidden photos. Users save in a separate album for a narrow circle of people. The service allows you to look into the hidden albums of social network users. This site allows you to find out a little more about your friends. However, not all users end up in the Livestock Database. Pages that were created recently will most likely not be listed in the database directory.
How to remove a photo from the Stockyard
The service stores a large amount of information. Photos that have been entered into the database can be deleted. Deleting a photo costs 500 rubles. After depositing money, all information about the user is deleted from the database. Moreover, re-entering user data will no longer happen. The data deletion function is currently closed. Further developments of events are unknown.
Bypass blocking
Bypassing site blocking involves changing your IP address. An IP address is a unique network address of a computer. You can change your network address in various ways:
The most in a simple way Bypassing the blocking is the use of browser plugins.
In new versions of Opera There is a built-in VPN feature. Activation of this function is carried out as follows:
After the work done in address bar The VPN activation item will appear. The enabled VPN option is displayed in blue, and the disabled option is displayed in white.
Proxy activation V Mozilla browser Firefox carried out as follows:
- You should open the menu and select “add-ons”.
- Next, you should find the “get add-on” item and scroll to the bottom of the page.
- At the bottom of the “get add-on” page there will be a “see more add-ons” button. You should click on this button, after which the add-ons catalog page will open. In the directory search, you need to enter the key phrase “VPN”.
- The catalog will contain a large number of different proxy add-ons that will allow you to access a blocked site.
The Tor browser allows you to access blocked sites without registration. Thor is free software, which encrypts received and sent data. Using Tor, you can change your IP address and gain access to a blocked site.
This browser can be downloaded from the official website “tor-browser.ru”. After installing it, you can start working. Working with Tor is carried out as follows:
- You should select the “Change identity” function in the menu item.
- After clicking this button, the computer will be given a new IP address.
- There are some problems when using the Tor browser. Thor may freeze when connected. This happens because the time on the computer is set incorrectly. Even if the computer clock lags by 1 hour, the connection to the servers stops.
Using proxy programs
If the above options do not work, then you can use VPN programs. Most proxy services are paid, but they provide a trial period of 30 days of use. Thirty days will be enough to work with the Skotobaza website. Here are the most popular VPN programs:
If the site is in working order, then accessing it will not be difficult.
The Skotobaza.org website appeared in March 2014 and initially its servers were located in Ireland. The essence of the service boiled down to the following: robots collected photographs posted in the general or limited access on the VKontakte network, copied them and placed them in the database. From there they could easily be obtained by searching by VKontakte user ID number. The only way to prevent photos from leaking is to set them to "Only Me Visible" status. If the images were placed in albums to which at least one other person had access, then the robots read it, and it inevitably ended up in the site’s database.
In contact with
Classmates
What is skotobaza and why is it needed at all?
Monetization of the skotobaza website was not based on advertisers, like most startups, but on “donations.” If the user wanted his photos to be permanently deleted from the Animal Farm, he had to contribute 450 rubles “to help the project.” After this, all information on the account was deleted from the Animal Farm. Presumably forever. In essence, it was a kind of extortion, and it was immediately obvious that the site would have problems. Of course, they didn't have to wait long.
Already in 2015, Roskomnadzor became seriously interested in the service, citing its dissatisfaction with the law on the protection of personal data of citizens Russian Federation. The threat of blocking was fully realized on May 30, 2015, and the site became officially unavailable in Russia. For some time it still remained operational and, using the usual mechanisms for bypassing blocking that affect other prohibited resources on the network, it was possible to gain access to it.
Mirrors and analogues of Skotobase
Besides the main link, for a while there was a mirror site with a shortened address: sko.to. However, along with the fall of the Animal Farm itself, it also went dark. At the moment, the simplest check on downforeveryoneorjustme.com gives the following: It’s not just you! skotobaza.org looks down from here. That is, the site is truly offline for everyone.
The site spalili.com was active for some time, but after a while it also closed. At the moment, services such as vkfaces.com and udb.im operate on the network, but they clearly do not live up to their predecessor and disclose only publicly available information that can be easily viewed on Vkontakte itself. Therefore, the effectiveness of such resources is virtually reduced to zero.
In case the service resumes operation or a functioning analogue appears, it is worth looking at ways to bypass the blocking of the Stockyard. They will clearly come in handy in the future to easily access other resources of interest.
Ways to bypass blocking of sites banned in Russia
As a rule, bypassing blocking of sites, including Stockyards, carried out by masking the IP address. That is, in essence, the computer creates the appearance that the user is accessing the site from another country. Such masking is performed using several well-known algorithms.
The first is anonymizers. These are proxy and web servers that hide the user's network address and replace it with their own. Usually these are either sites like Cameleo or Hideme. They redirect the user's request by opening the desired network addresses in a separate browser frame. There is no need to configure or install anything. You can simply enter the address of interest in the appropriate line and press Enter.
The problem is that this method significantly reduces security. In addition, anonymizers have the bad property of constantly closing themselves. There are very, very few truly long-term and stable services of this type among the free ones.
If money is not a problem, then there are also several stable working paid anonymizers that charge users subscription fee once a year and offer expanded capabilities in return.
The second way to bypass blocking is to install a browser plugin. Most of these tools have cross-browser support, that is, they work with Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and even Yandex.Browser. Of the most popular plugins, four can be noted:
- anonymousx,
- Browsec,
- friGate
- zenmate.
Plugins, like anonymizers, are divided into free and paid. As a rule, the second type offers an additional number of servers and greater speed.
Third way - using a VPN server. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, that is, a virtual private network. There are several proven and stable services. Among them are the following:
The fourth option is overlay networks. The most famous tool in this category is the TOR browser. Represents specialized assembly Firefox browser with NoScript, Torbutton and HTTPS Everywhere plugins already installed out of the box. It uses cascade proxying as its main tool. That is, data packets are transmitted not through one proxy server, but through at least three. This algorithm makes the process of tracking data transmission extremely labor-intensive and allows the user to effectively hide his location. Among other things, it makes it possible to visit blocked sites, including the cattle depot org.
Bypassing the blocking of the Animal Farm - Legal or not?
It is worth considering that the State Duma adopted a law that prohibits providers from providing users with access to resources that allow them to bypass blocking. The law will come into force on November 1, 2017.
In contact with
There are not entirely legal services on the Internet. For example, Skotobaza. This is a site that stores personal photos of VKontakte users. And also those ever posted and subsequently deleted. You can also find hidden or deleted friends. The site is blocked by Roskomnadzor, but the blocking can be bypassed. At the time of blocking, the robots had collected more than 106 million photos.
Personally, I managed to find my photos posted on VK back in 2009 and deleted long ago.
What is Skotobaza?
The tradition of leaking photos on the RuNet dates back to the School of Freaks in the early 2000s. School of Freaks is a LiveJournal community where social media users post bad photos for laughs. Skotobaza used to have something similar, but in 2014 Skotobaza launched as a service for storing private photos of VKontakte users. In fact, they are not entirely private - if there is a lock on the photo, then it will not end up in any Animal Farm. It’s just that many people post personal photos for a limited circle of people: for example, in the albums of a closed fitness community. Or in the open. And from there the photographs migrate to the cattle depot.
What can you find in it?
First of all, photos that were not publicly posted by a VKontakte user, but, nevertheless, were somehow exposed somewhere: in the community, among friends, and similar albums. In general, you will be able to see more than you should. Although not all users are in the cattle depot, and not all the newest drains are poured there. As I already said, I found my photos there from 2008, but you are unlikely to find the latest user photos simply because the service has currently stopped collecting photos.
Is it possible to delete a photo from the Animal Farm?
Previously, there was a paid photo removal service. For 490 rubles you could buy the peace of your VK profile. Photos were deleted and never added again. Now there is no such service, it’s just that the site itself is blocked by Roskomnadzor. But this does not mean that you cannot go to it bypassing the blocking and see what is there.
Are there any analogues to Skotobaza?
You need to understand that photo and video content takes up a lot of space, and such sites cannot be created in a jiffy. Besides, they are blocked anyway. The Animal Farm had an analogue, spalili.org, but it no longer works. That is, there is none at all - there is not even a blocking that could be bypassed.
The Animal Farm doesn't have a mirror either. The cattle depot tried to move to different domains several times, but they were still closed down.
You can bypass the blocking of the Animal Farm site. For this, exactly the same methods are suitable as for bypassing the blocking of the Rutreker website - both of these sites are blocked by Roskomnadzor, and it is enough to log in anonymously. To do this, you can install an extension in your browser; this is described in detail in my . There are possible extensions for each browser and where to get them.
And it came out recently a new version Opera with built-in VPN, there is another way to bypass the blocking. To do this, you just need to enable VPN mode in the Opera settings, and then calmly go to the cattle station. I’ll explain, just in case, how to enable VPN in the new Opera.
How to enable VPN in Opera
First, you must have a new Opera (no older than September 2016) - download if not.
You can go to Skotobaza.org.
Fast one-time method
If you are really lazy, then you can bypass the blocking of the Stockyard like this:
Example of using the Stockyard
Enter the user ID in the contact, for example, id123456, into the field, and you will receive his photos and a list of friends.
Search by livestock depot Where else can you look for people and photos?
If you couldn’t get into the site’s database or couldn’t find anything in it, you can try your luck on other sites. It happens that information that is closed in VK is open on Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Twitter and other networks or posted on unexpected sites. So, here are the ways to get through the information.
Search for people on social networks from Yandex
Let's say there is a first and last name of a person you are interested in. Using them, you can search for a person’s profiles on other social networks. To do this, try entering your first and last name in the service (people.yandex.ru). There you can specify other parameters that clarify your identity.
FindFace service
If you have a photo of a person, you can use the well-known service (https://findface.ru), which now also searches for profiles on Twitter. This service is designed for facial recognition: in it you can, for example, find a person based on a photo you took on the street.
This means that if two VK and Twitter profiles have the same person (even if the photos are different), then using the photo from one profile you can find the second profile.
Google Image Search
You can search by image: if there is a picture that you think could serve as an avatar for this person somewhere else, then you can search by image: you will find that person on another site. Perhaps another site will have more open information about the user.
The difference is that FindFace searches for similar photos, but only on VK and Twitter. And a search on Google is carried out everywhere on the Internet, but only identical pictures are found (exactly), there is no smart facial recognition here. Similar images are also shown on Google, but the similarity is determined by color, shape, etc., and not by the face. On Google, you can only hope to find an identical avatar on another site.
So, for a Google image search:
Search by image Yandex
Similarly, you can search by image in Yandex.
Facebook people search service
There is also an interesting way to search and track people on Facebook. This service searches for all comments from a specific user, photos in which they are tagged, and much more. Built-in Facebook search very limited, but the service helps to bypass the restrictions.
Search engine Nigma
Sometimes search system(nigma.ru) displays profiles not found in Yandex. Although it seems to be a secondary system that does not use its own algorithms. However, I found on the first page something that Yandex did not provide. Try it, you might come across something interesting. Just enter your first and last name in the search bar. You can try entering the person's nickname, if you have one.
Situation in 2017
Unfortunately, in 2017 the workarounds no longer work. I checked several times. At the moment, the site is not only blocked by Roskomnadzor, but itself is no longer supported - it does not exist even by bypassing the blocking. Apparently the creators decided that it was expensive and pointless to keep this site afloat if only a few people visit it anyway, bypassing the blocking. Several dozen people came in every day, I think. And this is too little.
Problems
