• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

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

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