FAQ

General questions and technology

Privacy

Payment

What does piFilter do?

piFilter is the engine which detects the porn content in images. You can submit requests to piFilter via API and obtain the porn level on each image which is transferred through your service.

I have the online business, and the content moderators are currently reviewing images. Why do I need piFilter?

Manual moderation is good if you do not care about costs and business growth. Manual operations cost too much in comparison to piFilter automatic processing. Just take into account direct costs, operational and administrative costs and overheads, and compare them to piFilter tariffs, and you get the approach. Using piFilter, you are able to cut costs 5x times and ensure 100% of quality-to-speed with the small team of content moderators.

Does piFilter analyse keywords attached to images to estimate the porn?

No, piFilter is the pure visual analysis engine. It recognizes the typical scenes and body patterns in order to calculate the porn ratio. However, in the future we are going to provide additional algorithms for text and video content analysis.

What technology does piFilter use?

piFilter is based on the pattern recognition and image processing algorithms developed by Recogmission LLC. The analysis technique simulates the human perception of the visual content in order to evaluate it.

What kind of the image estimation do I obtain?

You receive the estimation which can be one of three values: 'porn', 'no porn' and 'suspicious'.

Does piFilter block porn images?

No, piFilter calculates the level of porn, so the final solution is up to you. You may allow images to be transferred through your service, block them or generate system alerts for further moderation.

Who can use piFilter?

Any provider of the public Internet service is recommended to use piFilter. ISPs and corporate network admins, online photo albums, social networks, blogs, file hostings and other social media resources may use piFilter.

I manage the local network and do not have the internet service. Can I use piFilter?

Yes, you can. In general, you must to have the Internet connection to use piFilter for any kind of network, global or local. However, if you have some restrictions on using the Internet for content filtering, please contact us to negotiate on the best solution.

How can I use piFilter? What kind of data requests do I have to send?

You can use piFilter via API provided by our service. For each image, you should send the request containing the image or its URL together with your registration info to piFilter engine using http/soap and obtain the response with the porn estimations. For more information read piFilter manuals.

What kind of programming languages can I use in my system to exchange data with piFilter?

Any. The only requirement is that you have to call piFilter API via http/soap.

If I subscribe to piFilter, first I have to set up my software properly. Do you charge for all requests to piFilter including my trials?

Do not worry. We add the substantial number of free requests into any package. When you subscribe, you obtain the prepaid number of requests plus at least 100 free requests to set up your software. For more info, go to our Tariffs.

If I get subscribed, when can I start using piFilter?

You can use piFilter immediately as the confirmation message arrives into your mailbox. The message should arrive in minutes after your payment is being processed.

What kind of request should I use: image's URL or image file itself?

It depends on your service. We recommend you sending the URL of the image, because it will ensure faster processing in most cases. However, sometimes your service is made so that images are not accessible via URLs directly from the outside. In such cases you can send the natural image as the query to piFilter.

Do you limit the size of the image?

Standard tariffs process images not exceeding 10 Mpx and 6 Mb, and bigger than 0.00064 Mpx. It means 98% of all web images. If you want  to process bigger files, contact us to set up special service.

What is about the privacy? Do you share the information about my traffic with 3rd parties?

No, we do not share such info with anybody else. Moreover, we do not store the information which connects your identity to the traffic. As piFilter returned the estimation for the particular image by your request, it forgets immediately that it was your own request. The traffic is free of ID associations.

How do you charge me for using piFilter?

We charge for the number of requests. You may select one of different tariffs according to your needs. We offer fixed packages with the pre-defined number of requests for those customers own traffic, and the Freestyle tariff for clients who cannot predict the traffic, but has certain financial limitations. In any case, you pay for the number of requests to piFilter.

How do you calculate the traffic in Freestyle?

Let us consider the example (actual prices are subject to be changed!): you purchased some traffic for 200 USD at Freestyle. We estimate that 150 USD of that budget corresponds to the nearest least fixed package including 60,000 requests. The rest of the budget, 50 USD is above 60,000 package, and it is right inside next fixed package including 150,000 requests for 300 USD. The calculations are following: your traffic is 60,000 + 50 USD * 150,000/300 USD=85,000 requests.

Do you charge for the traffic volumes (megabytes, gigabytes, etc.)?

No. We charge only for the number of requests independently of data volumes.

What payment options do you offer?

We accept payments by all major credit cards including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover/Novus, Diners Club, JCB.

How can I check my balance and traffic?

After the subscription, you may log into the account using your login and password. You will see your instant balance in the account panel.

What will happen when my balance becomes empty?

If you balance is empty, piFilter will accept your requests during a week. However, instead of the porn estimation, you will receive the code stating that your balance is out of service and has to be charged. Then you can pay for another package and start using piFilter again.

Will you inform me in advance before my traffic is out of limits?

Yes. We send the emails with the alerts several times before your balance is empty to let you purchase new traffic.

I selected the particular tariff during the registeration. Can I change the tariff?

Yes. You can change the tariff at any time when you pay for another package. The balance issued during the previous payment will be spent according to the previous tariff. New payment will be associated with the new tariff.

How should I choose the tariff?

We recommend the tariff based on your daily or monthly traffic in number of images. For instance, you have the small online photo album with the daily traffic of 2,000 images displayed. If you want to pay monthly, you can select the tariff with 60,000 requests, as you monthly traffic is about 60,000 images. If you want to pay quarterly for about 180,000 requests, you can select the corresponding package. Larger package is better for you because we offer the discounts for bigger volumes.

How do you estimate my traffic if I changed the tariff before my previous traffic is spent?

We just summarize all active traffic purchased the user on the date of last purchase. For instance, initially you have purchased the tariff with 60,000 of images, then spent 40,000 of them and purchased the tariff with 150,000 images. After that you have 150,000+20,000=170,000 images of the total active traffic. We will process 170,000 images for you.

How can I be sure about your calculations of the number of my requests?

It is easy. If you want to verify our calculations, you may refer to the logs of your own web service where you can see all requests from your service and to your service from outside. Find requests to piFilter and estimate their number.

Do you offer discounts for larger volumes of requests?

Yes. Fixed packages with large number of requests are better in terms of pay-per-request in comparison to small packages.

If I send the wrong query and got the error code, will I be charged?

You will be charged only if you have the non-zero balance and you either recieved the estimation value, or the Data Error code. In all other cases you will not be charged.