Your geo-tagged EXIF data may be revealing more than you want

[Darren Addy]

I was first going to put this in Bar & Grill, but decided that it should go in the equipment thread. (Mods, if you disagree, feel free to move it). This isn't exactly brand new information, but I don't recall it being discussed on ST, so thought I would pass it along.

Chasers use GPS more than your average person, so perhaps you hadn't given this a thought, but you are giving a lot of information away about yourself (and perhaps your kids or other loved ones) when you upload or tweet from a GPS enabled phone, unless you have turned it off. This info can be used by the wrong people.



At first I thought that maybe this was just Sensationalizing News Story of the Night, but after doing a little digging I found that this is also clearly a big deal (security risk) to the military, as this document on "protecting unit safety" indicates.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...of_twitter_users_posting_geotagged_photos.phpI Can Stalk U: New Site Posts Exact Locations of Twitter Users Posting Geotagged Photos

For information on how to disable geo-tagging for various phones out there:
http://icanstalku.com/how.php#disable

There are apparently browser plug-ins that make it pretty easy to right-click on a photo and then map the geo-location to Google Maps. Online apps like Flickr use this info when you search for photos from a particular location:

I went to Flickr, clicked the dropdown for Explore, and selected Places. The next page asks me to enter a place in the search bar so I typed the town I live in which brings up a small map with a pink dot and several pictures on it. I click the map to enlarge it and more dots show up, each one revealing a picture and where it was taken. I zoom in and start clicking on the dots to reveal the picture taken there and notice a name linked to one of the pictures belongs to a young girl in my Facebook friends list. I got a little paniced when I thought of how a predator could use this service as a tool to cause harm. Sorry to get so serious, but people need to understand the risks and how to protect their kids if they intend to equip them with a smartphone. I am sure this girl did not intend to associate a location with her photo and would be surprised to see how easily it happened.

 

[John Wetter]

Indeed, when you use these apps that add location information to something, they will tell the location information of something.

 

[Jason Foster]

LOL...I don't use a smart phone, and I can't get the geotagging to work on photos I upload and WANT the location to be shown (they aren't personal).

But yes, there are a ton of sites too that can get all kinds of personal information (like mylife.com). Tons and tons out there. Some of it isn't correct (I seem to often show up as married, living in a $1million home, but it did get somethings right that I don't want on the net. Having it removed...not so easy either.

Thanks Darren for the heads up.

 

[Jim Parsons]

Adam Savage, one of the "Mythbusters' host, took a picture of his car parked in front of his house and tweeted that he was on his way to work(empty house) and his house was burgalarized.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/technology/personaltech/12basics.html?_r=3

 

[rdale]

Jim - are you sure his house was broken into? I don't see that in your link.

 

[Tarmo Tanilsoo]

Granted, you need to have sense to turn the geotags off at right time, but there are cases where for example I wish I had a geotags ability - namely when chasing.

 

[Jim Parsons]

RDALE....Your right. When I oringinally read about this story it talked about his house being burgalarized and now I see that this article doesn't say anything about it. If I find the original article I read I will post it.....