Have you ever stumbled across a jpeg file named similar to this pattern: 522246_10150860163566961_2143826540_n.jpg? Chances are, the file was downloaded from Facebook. So lets say you have this file and want to look up the original source. For the last few years, one of the numbers in the filename was the uploaders unique profile ID, so you were easily able find the original uploader simply by going to:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=ID
However, this is no longer possible. Today i discovered that Facebook recently changed their file-naming pattern, the uploaders unique profile ID is no longer part of the filename (note: the unique profile id is still included in the small version of a users current profile picture filename, but not in any other image filenames).
So how can we find the source of the image? Let us look at the pattern again:
522246_10150860163566961_2143826540_n.jpg
The middle number is the unique image id (so far, i have not figured out what the other two numbers are). You can try to view this image by calling this site:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=unique-image-id
When calling this site the uploaders privacy settings will be enforced, so if you see a error message the photo might have been set to private. The picture could have also been deleted.
