Can someone do some investigating for me please?

[margarita7]

DH and I were watching a program which brought up reverse image searching.
DH said to me that someone had done it on his picture and it brought up a plenty of fish link (the reason someone searched is not suspicious).

He said this casually and I was like ??? So I did the search and sure enough it linked to POF, but I can't see anything and it says the image was first saved in 2014, I didn't meet DH until 2015 and I know he had this website.

However, as we met on a dating app, I made sure to reiterate to delete everything and he said he had. My gut has an uneasy feeling as to why this would show up - he says it must be that his picture has been cached. I've never used POF but I've learned you can hide your profile which makes me think that's what he did and not delete it? But if it's been 5 years would the profile still exist with inactivity?

Also should mention I've tried to log in to what would have been the email he used then and it doesn't work, if you try forgotten password it also doesn't work. This could be indicative that he no longer has an account but I still feel a bit naive?

The picture is probably the best picture of him that he has despite being 6 years old so I am sure if he were to ever do something dodgy then he'd use it.

Any help?

I think his explanation sounds plausible. Why do you suspect him?

To be honest it sounds like you don’t trust him at all so it would be better to focus on why that is. If my DH and I had this exact conversation I would 100% believe it had been cached and it wouldn’t cross my mind that he was up to anything. Because I completely trust him and to me that’s a totally plausible explanation. It sounds like he is discussing this with you in an open and relaxed way, so why are you so suspicious?

Sounds very plausible

You can find all my old Flickr pics despite me deleting the account years ago

The biggest red flag here is you not trusting him.

This is what you need to be investigating. Has he given you any cause to not believe him?

Actually I have an old deleted POF!

Gonna attempt to search but got a super common name

I think it’s reasonable he just didn’t bother to delete his profile after he made it inactive and has since forgotten about it.

Why were you trying to log in to it though? If you have no other reason to doubt him that seems unfair and shows you don’t trust him

If he was trying to hide something why would he bring it up? Things are never fully deleted from the internet. But why are you suspicious of him? Do you not trust him?

And no idea what they photo was...

I have trust issues and this would not be ringing alarm bells for me OP, his explanation sounds complete plausible to me. Do you have any other reason to be suspicious?

I deleted Instagram years ago and my pictures still come up when reverse image searching.

When accounts or website get deleted, it's often only the webpage that links to the images. Every image uploaded to any website has it's own unique url that ends in ".jpg" instead of ".html". These may float around the internet forever, depending on the webhost or server. These can also be found by Google using their search.

Do you trust him to not be on a dating app?

Fwiw, I was doing OLD before I met dh. One of the websites was very specific for meeting people with a particular social interest (so not just the standards ones like Match, POF, etc.), so it was a fairly small time business behind it. I've never been able to delete my profile (lost the login details and I lost the security question info to re-set password, etc.). It's very old and outdated (and I don't even know if the website exists anymore). But my profile and photo are still out there potentially. I know up until maybe 6-8 years ago, I would still get the occasionally message from someone. I've been with dh over 12 years and definitely have no interest in meeting anyone. I can't imagine he would be at all suspicious if I told him, and would probably find it pretty humorous, because he definitely knows I'm not trying to be out there on a dating site.

His explanation is totally plausible and wouldn’t give me reason not to trust him, so I assume you have other reasons for not trusting him? Does he have a history of suspicious behaviour?

I’m not sure that you’re being naive about your husband, but almost definitely about online. You can’t really delete anything reliably from online. Anyone could have downloaded it or screenshot it to upload at any point, Google or any other search engine could have a cache...

You’re quite lucky that your photos don’t show up anywhere else, if they don’t. It’s not unusual that your husbands do, especially as POF is an indexed site. The upload date matches when you knew he was online...

If I was your husband, I’d be pretty upset and sceptical about why you don’t believe him here. From what you’ve said; he’s given you no reason not to. Is there a back story? Does he have previous? It seems harsh not to believe him otherwise.

As PP have said, it’s actually very hard to delete something permanently off the internet. Your DP’s explanation is perfectly plausible.

The bigger issue here is - Why don’t you trust him?

My POF account is out there forever. It's a bitch to delete.

Dave Gorman did a piece on this. He discovered that somebody on Tinder had taken an old photo of him from the Internet and used it as his own profile. Dave got his wife to set up an account and tracked him down through that. Unsurprisingly, he turned out to be a scammer.

Scammers will often trawl online looking for pictures of people to pretend are themselves in order to hook in new victims, especially if they're pretending to be white European/American and they themselves are not white (or even the same sex).

It might not even be scammers - it could just be somebody who isn't very good looking hoping that a profile pic of a similar-featured but more attractive person might help them to get more initial right-swipes.

The fact that he alerted you of it as soon as he discovered it must surely be proof that it's all innocent?

I definitely deleted my POF profile but it still comes up in Google searches! As does my partners

He told you his image came up if you did a reverse image search so I’d be pretty confident that nothing untoward is going on. Why would he mention it if it was his secret?

That said, if you don’t fully trust him, that’s not a good sign. As my mum always said “without trust you don’t have a relationship”

Now, you either trust him and put it behind you or you don’t trust him and admit your relationship is over. That’s your choice. I personally wouldn’t give it a second thought.

If he was trying to hide something why would he bring it up?

Exactly.

I would be very careful how you thread here.

If my partner started "investigating" me like this, I would not be happy.

Old profiles do often show up.

(tech point)

Dave Gorman found that someone was using his picture on Tinder, and set about tracking them down.

twitter.com/davegorman/status/608302414287007744

So it's certainly a thing that pictures are picked up off the internet.

Can't really say anything else.

Do you have ANY other reason not to trust him OP, because I really don't think this is a big deal and I'm a bit concerned that you do.

A few months into dating DP a friend sent me a screengrab of his Hinge profile as a heads up that he was still on there. It turned out that he'd just deleted the app without deleting the profile. I was faux-suspicious of him and wound him up a bit until we realised that I'd done exactly the same thing. Whoops .

Surely if he was up to anything dodgy, he wouldn't have told you about it in the first place?