The Hidden Security Risk of Geotags 175
pickens writes "The NY Times reports that security experts and privacy advocates have begun warning consumers about the potential dangers of geotags, which are embedded in photos and videos taken with GPS-equipped smartphones and digital cameras. By looking at geotags of uploaded photos, 'you can easily find out where people live, what kind of things they have in their house and also when they are going to be away,' says one security expert. Because the location data is not visible to the casual viewer, the concern is that many people may not realize it is there; and they could be compromising their privacy, if not their safety, when they post geotagged media online."
This is why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is why... (Score:5, Interesting)
After selling it to their advertising partners, of course...
Seems kinda pointless. I already get pretty damned accurate location-specific ads, presumably by just looking at my ip. When I connect to my employer's VPN, I get ads for things in the region that that data center is in...
Would knowing, say, that the majority of interior shots (probably my home) are on one particular city block vs another really be worth that much more to an advertiser?
Re:This is why... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd assume that they are more interested in pictures taken out and about. Where do you vacation, dine out, meet up with friends, etc?
As you say, IP geolocation does a pretty decent job for wired connections(I don't know whether wireless carriers will sell out customer locations, and, if so, what the price is); but people take a lot of photos, possibly the majority, away from their primary wired ISP.
Re:This is why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would knowing, say, that the majority of interior shots (probably my home) are on one particular city block vs another really be worth that much more to an advertiser?
Yes. They can correlate it with property records and figure out who you are, what bank you have your mortgage with, how much you paid for your house, when you bought it, your likely income level, if you are married (more than one name on the mortgage) and that's just from the primary property records search in some states. Start cross-referencing it with other databases and my guess is that you'll have no secrets at all.
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Would knowing, say, that the majority of interior shots (probably my home) are on one particular city block vs another really be worth that much more to an advertiser?
Yes. They can correlate it with property records and figure out who you are, what bank you have your mortgage with, how much you paid for your house, when you bought it, your likely income level, if you are married (more than one name on the mortgage) and that's just from the primary property records search in some states. Start cross-referencing it with other databases and my guess is that you'll have no secrets at all.
How does having gps data in some photos impact this? All that data is already aggregated and used for less-than-wholesome purposes. Companies like google and flickr already know your identity (or can easily deduce it), so what more info does some exif data leak to advertisers? If I'm a backhanded ad firm, and I get Facebook to sell me the fact that facebookuser02 likely lives at 123 main. Who cares? Aren't there far easier ways to ascertain that?
Note, this is a separate question from "what does this
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Companies like google and flickr already know your identity (or can easily deduce it), so what more info does some exif data leak to advertisers?
Because people need to be aware of and be able to manage the trade-offs of disclosing information. Perhaps they have taken steps to deliberately obfuscate the info disclosed through other channels, but unknowingly disclosing information through geotags waters down the effectiveness of the other precautions they have taken.
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I was recently alerted to a web site where people can post pics of themselves - with the url implying naked pics. There were women there with iphone pics that had enough exif info to get their street address. I would venture to guess that when they put their pics there they didn't think it would be possible to determine who they were or where they live.
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I was recently alerted to a web site where people can post pics of themselves - with the url implying naked pics
Yeah, right. Man up and just post where you were surfing.
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I was recently alerted to a web site where people can post pics of themselves - with the url implying naked pics. There were women there with iphone pics that had enough exif info to get their street address. I would venture to guess that when they put their pics there they didn't think it would be possible to determine who they were or where they live.
URL please?
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If I was selling Bob's Pizza I could do a search for a Pizza Hut logo and then pitch my product to you.
Re:This is why... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why people shouldn't be so casual about publishing every detail of their personal life for the world to see. These micro-celebrity wannabes should wake up and recognize that their lack of privacy makes them easy targets.
Re:This is why... (Score:4, Interesting)
How many of you have ever written "my boss is an idiot" on a word document at work, as a joke, then erased it?
Better hope your boss isn't savvy. [addbalance.com]
Which is why I believe that any Joe-user program which processes documents or media should offer a checkbox and.or dialog explantion offering the user to strip the metadata from saved documents or media. Before any of you say, "stripping is already available", keep in mind how many co-workers don't even know what cookies are.
Re:This is why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Before any of you say, "stripping is already available", keep in mind how many co-workers don't even know what cookies are.
You insensitive clod! My coworkers are all CS grad students.
Seriously though, they don't take any steps to strip metadata, even though it is well within their technical ability to do so, and even though they are generally aware of the risks.
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CS grads.. sadly many still don't know what cookies are.
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Silly, everyone knows what cookies are. Grandma makes them every Christmas and sends them to the family.
It doesn't help that the name "Cookie" is something they already know about that sort of turns on the "I hear what you are saying but not paying attention because I already know" switch. Of course then you have the problem of unique words making a simple statement like "defragmenting or chkdsk'ing your root drive" sound like a foreign language.
This doesn't invalidate your point, it's meant to reinforce it
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That explains why nobody realized that my recommendation that they "toss their cookies" was security advice.
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- So-and-so checked into their house at 123 Main Street, Hometown USA! So-and-so is now the mayor of their house!
- So-and-so bought a new MacBook Pro for $3297 using Blippy at the Apple Store in Winston Niles Rumfoord Shopping Center!
- So-and-so checked into the Relax'em Spa.
- So-and-so bought a 1 hour massage and
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You would have to be an unbelievably stupid robber to target a house based on this sort of thing. The assumption that because I'm going out somewhere my house will be entirely empty is wrong probably as often as it's right. Just cause I'm at a Spa for a 2 hour massage doesn't mean that my roommate or house guest (you know the 250lb ex-marine police officer) isn't still hanging around. Pretty much anything short of a tweet saying "Hi, my house will be completely vacant for the next 4 hours" will not tell you
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It gives you better information than you could get without access to that information. As supplemental information to a traditional casing, it can dramatically reduce the likelihood of bumping into someone (such as when you ring the doorbell in your workman's uniform to double check there is in fact nobody home) who might remember your face.
In addition, with the geotagged photos, you could be seeing what theft targets there are on the premises. Big screen TV, new camera, new computer, etc., but also less
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I see you've heard of PleaseRobMe.com
Re:This is why... (Score:4, Informative)
This is why upload services should simply just strip out the un-needed info of the pictures. The original pictures still have the sometimes useful geolocation data, but your Facebook pictures won't.
But is it wise to be trusting your services (i.e. Facebook) to take these extra steps to protect your privacy? Wouldn't it make more sense to have an educated consumer base who can be careful what they upload in the first place? At the very least, the value of this information to marketers would make it unlikely that free, online services like Facebook would simply throw this valuable data away. It would make more sense for consumer electronic devices to do a better job of informing the user of what information is "hidden" in the media files they create, with a default off option for anything "hidden".
Re:This is why... (Score:4, Informative)
I always use IrfanView [irfanview.com] to pre-process my pictures before uploading them anywhere. You need to do that anyway (original pictures are usually huge 4000+ pixels wide and forums usually limit you to less than 1280px). When you're saving the image, it shows check boxes to remove all extra information from the pictures (usually camera model and shooting options and so on). Easy. And yeah, it's an awesome and light image viewer and you can edit images too.
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What crap, Why should it be the Hosting sites responsibility?
You sent them the file. It is your file. If you dont want geotags in the file, then clean the file first.
Shouldn't be the upload service's responsibility (Score:2)
This is why upload services should simply just strip out the un-needed info of the pictures.
Why is it up to the upload service? Right now people have 100% control over their information and can strip whatever data they like. You might argue the upload service could provide a tool to help them do it more easily by setting preferences (which they could alter on a per upload basis). However I don't want a provider determining what information I can or can't attach to the photos. What if I'm actually trying to put together a map with photos attached. For instance I went to a lot of trouble to combine
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*It's average, not bad at all, grouping around quite nice value, by definition.
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Right now people have 100% control over their information and can strip whatever data they like.
You make a lot of assumptions about the average person's intelligence regarding technology.* You're certainly correct that it's their responsibility, but if it isn't so hard to remove that data, why can't the upload service do it anyway? Think of it as offering extra service to one's customers.
*One might argue this period could be moved two words to the left.
Yes and lets remove the tips from sharp tools too, so people can't hurt themselves. If the problem is that people are not knowledgeable enough to use the technology there's no good substitute for education. Certainly breaking things to idiot proof them isn't a good idea.
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This is why upload services should simply just strip out the un-needed info of the pictures.
Imgur does do that.
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In my own galleries I used "wrjpgcom -replace -comment ''" to strip all EXIF/IPTC from the files. Works like a charm and it's fast and efficient.
General problem (Score:2)
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> I have to wonder...
No you don't. You could look.
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It's much like how Windows stores various user data in well hidden index.dat files that can't be cleared by the user through normal means. Clearing browsing history, cookies, privacy settings, etc has no effect on them. It's the view of many in the know that Window's index.dat files, while useful at times to various applications, mainly exist to benefit law enforcement.
Ron
The Hidden Danger of Post Marks on Letters (Score:5, Insightful)
OMG, letters have post marks and tell what town the sender lives in!
OMG, caller ID gives my phone number to people that I call!
OMG, the Registry of Deeds lists my address and how much I paid for the house!
OMG, the phone book list my name, phone number and address!
We've been dealing with stuff like this for decades, right? I think the danger is more about the contents of your tweets ("I am on vacation") than the metadata ("I live here"). I can probably find your address if I wanted, even without Flickr metadata.
Of course, metadata can lie as well. Maybe I want to say, "I have a big coin collection" in Twitter and put photos of it all over the place on the web, but with false geotag data to make it look like it came from someone else's home. Because of that risk, even those who do not use Twitter, or the iPhone or Flickr are also at risk. Gee. maybe we should just lock our doors at night.
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Right, who would have ever thought that taking pictures of your stuff, then posting those pictures online would let people know what kind of stuff you have?
Re:The Hidden Danger of Post Marks on Letters (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that it allows correlation. Have two pseudonyms on the net that you use to post pictures? Now suddenly people can easily track you down by your GPS coordinates or better yet, the serial number of your camera or whatever other unique information one can grab from the metadata.
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iPhones contain the long/lat of the place where the picture was taken. That's a little bit more than "letters have post marks and tell what town the sender lives in!". Don't be naive. Look at the Sherlock Holmes shit that 4chan does *regularly* with things such as EXIF data.
There was a famous thread on there once where a 30 year old guy was professing how much he wanted to sleep with his 16 year old niece's friend. Using nothing but the emblem of her school mascot on the front, 4chan tracked HIM down an
Re:The Hidden Danger of Post Marks on Letters (Score:5, Insightful)
You believe that having a creep know the town you live in is the same as the creep knowing your GPS coordinates?
No, we haven't been "dealing with stuff like this for decades", because until recently corporations have not had the capacity to have such persistent and precise data about you that they could monetize.
That picture of your 8 year old daughters that you put on the Internet has data that somebody will sell to the highest bidder, and I doubt they're going to make sure the highest bidder isn't a registered sex offender. I'm usually very suspicious of these kind of "consider the children" appeals, but the personal minutiae that is being commoditized by businesses has reached a point where it's going to be very hard to roll back.
You've got one of the biggest corporations in the world collecting very private information, selling it to the highest bidder and then getting into bed with the most repressive regimes on Earth and at the same time forming "strategic alliances" with other huge corporations to subvert the effective net "neutrality":that has been in place since the beginning. And Palestrina thinks that's the same as having your name and number voluntarily listed in the phone book. And his rationalization is that it's OK because if you know what you're doing you can falsify your metadata. Don't you see the problem here?
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"You believe that having a creep know the town you live in is the same as the creep knowing your GPS coordinates?"
Sigh. If you're a homeowner that same creep can easily discover exactly where you live, when you moved in, and how much you paid. It's public information. Not secret. Never was.
And the fact that you have kids, and their ages? Also not secret. Never was.
And do you know why it's not secret, and never was? It's because this is most emphatically not "very private information". It's stuff that any re
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Sigh. But those public records don't include pictures of your kids.
You've got no problem giving that same power to private corporations, over which you have absolutely no control. That's not touching, that's frightening.
And no
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OK, you're right. They're renting it to the highest bidder.
That make you feel better?
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With the dates there on your vacation pictures the thieves can just go back in time and rob your house and know for sure that you wont be back for several days.
THIS is what we really need to be worried about.
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When you call an individual, you give one person your phone number. When you mail someone, you give one person your address. And often, you want them to have your number and address. Cell phones aren't listed. A geotagged photo might be available to millions of people.
To use a register of deeds, wouldn't you need to have an actual address to start with?
Metadata can lie, but the tools to make it lie are hardly convenient.
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To use a register of deeds, wouldn't you need to have an actual address to start with?
In my county in Ohio, I can look up properties by name, address, or just by selecting them from a map. The map also includes aerial photos of sufficient resolution to put Google Earth to shame.
It's all on the Web, and it's free. Google around for your county's auditor, and you'll probably find a very similar system.
Learn something new (Score:2)
You are right about blocking CID, but there is little (domestic us) likelyhood you can really hide your number
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Number_Identification [wikipedia.org]
ANI is unrelated to caller ID. A caller's telephone number and line type are captured by ANI service even if caller ID blocking is activated. The destination telephone company switching office can relay the originating telephone number to ANI delivery services subscribers. Toll-free Inward WATS number subscribers and large companies normall
Geotags and a WHOLE lot more (Score:4, Informative)
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Websites should strip this data before displaying the image.
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Oh. I thought the GPS part was already covered by both TFA and TFS.
OP seemed to indicate that he had some different, scary insight to offer.
I guess not.
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Your Nikon toting friends might tease you when they find out you use a Canon.
Help! (Score:5, Funny)
Help, they can see me going into my house!
They will know where i live..
WHERE IS MY TIN FOIL HAT?!?!
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Last Friday it was on your nightstand, you might want to look there first.
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WHERE IS MY TIN FOIL HAT?!?!
See, if your pictures of your tinfoil hat had geolocation data attached on them, you'd be able to find it!
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His pictures did have geolocation data attached on them which is why I found his tin foil hat and his high dollar camera which was sitting right next to it. BTW, who uses a VCR anymore. I guess I should have looked at more of the pictures before going over. And that car he claims is his, he must have sold it to the neighbor because that's the driveway it was sitting in when I stopped by at 4 am last night.
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WHERE IS MY TIN FOIL HAT?!?!
You left it on the shelf in the downstairs bathroom.
HTH.
ImageMagick and remove metadata (Score:2, Informative)
You can use the "-strip" command-line option with ImageMagick's "convert" utility to strip out all the metadata from an image prior to uploading it.
Re:ImageMagick and remove metadata (Score:5, Informative)
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Yup, and it recompresses the image when you do so.
Which you need to do anyway before uploading a multi-megapixel image to a blog or forum that doesn't allow any image over 1280x1024 pixels.
Easy solution (Score:4, Interesting)
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Trust me, the rest of the world doesn't really want to see your pictures of the kids at their friend Joey's birthday party.
Specially not at 2048x1536.
Pictures can tell the future? (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Pictures can tell the future? (Score:4, Interesting)
You make a good point. If I'm going to break into someone's house, a good time to do it would probably be between 9am and 5pm Monday-Friday. Most thefts are crimes of opportunity, not premeditated Oceans-Eleven style. I could just sit out in front of their house in the morning and wait for them to leave for work. No pictures or geotags needed. With a just a couple of guys, I can clean the place out in about 10-15 minutes. Where I live, assuming someone notices and phones the cops, that is about twice the time needed before dispatch will finally put the call through to officers.
Took the cops more than an hour to show up for a suspicious person sitting in his car one morning doing what appeared to be casing a house in my neighborhood. More recently, took them 30 minutes to show up after a call about a man banging on the neighbor's door, yelling and threatening to kick it in.
The most effective deterrent is one of those 'ADT' type stickers. After that, the dog. If that doesn't work, a double-tap to the center of mass should end things rather abruptly.
The past can tell the future (Score:2)
How can uploaded photos tell someone when I am going to be away?
It's not out of the question. See my other comment [slashdot.org].
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Well the metadata shows the time and place of the photo. If I post a photo I just took while on vacation 200 miles away from home, someone could see that as of a certain time I'm 200 miles from home and not likely to be back home for at least 10 hours or so.
That being said I doubt robbers are going to be reloading your blog every hour just to see if you posted a pic indicating you're not at home. And of course it only works if you post the pic shortly after taking it. If you wait a couple of days before pos
We need to come up with a concept of "safe tags" (Score:2, Insightful)
Presumptively a 'safe' geotag is one that the user has control of.
The user should have options (A) No geotag [the default], (B) Fuzzy geotag that may reveal what city or state they are in, but not their actual location, (C) Hi-Res Geotags
Their phone should ask them how detailed the Geotag should be before they take pictures.
Their graphics software / picture sharing websites should ask what to do with Geotags before uploading.
e.g. (A) Hide/remove all geotags, (B) Only let friends see GeoTag i
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I think the core thing that needs to be solved in general is that of "invisible data". Most software makes it not exactly easy to see what exactly is stored in a file, instead it just provides you a stripped down view with most of the metadata hidden. This doesn't just happen with image files, but also Word documents, PDFs and plenty of other things.
Edit the exif ... (Score:2)
Still, it is a pain to have to do & think about. Gimp has an exif option, I have not used it.
That photo looks too good. I call BS. (Score:4, Insightful)
Gimp has an exif option, I have not used it.
But if you take a photo for Wikimedia Commons and strip the Exif, and your photography skill looks professional, some regular might assume that you are fraudulently claiming copyright ownership of some other photographer's all-rights-reserved images. Preserving your camera's Exif data tends to shift the burden of proof to whoever is calling bullshit.
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Sorry, but you'll have to come up with a bit more than "might", buster.
I have seen it happen once, but I didn't think to save the link.
Not all services are ignorant (Score:3, Interesting)
It's worth pointing out that not all services are ignorant to this issue. I use flickr and upload geotag information for every picture I take, but, nobody can see it unless they are someone I've accepted as a contact. You can ratchet things up a bit further and use their added friend and family classes for even more restriction. You can also reveal the data on a photo by photo basis if you don't mind it being seen (or actually want it available, like a photoshoot of interesting things in a public place.)
I'm sure other similar photo sharing sites have similar permissions capabilities. I suppose the most likely risk areas are the twitpics and yfrog type upload it and forget it sites.
Dangers to rare speciesand historical sites (Score:4, Insightful)
This is no surprise....nothing "hidden" about this (Score:2, Insightful)
People need to learn to wash their hands first (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually mean that literally. We go on and on about various privacy risks and on and on about how stupid "average people are" when there are some obvious patterns of behavior outside of computing/networking that shed some real light on where the problems originate.
People simply don't understand the world they live in. They don't understand their cars, their food (c'mon diet coke? really? that nutrasweet that slows your metabolism?) or just about anything? They might think they know some things but not really understand them and nor do they really care to. The people get "flu shots" every year not knowing what strains of influenza are actually being covered by this year's flu-shot-du-jour... they just expect "the experts" to know and to do what they are told.
So who are these experts that the masses follow? Whoever claims to be. The dairy council, for example (you know, the guys who make their living selling dairy products?) tell us every year to drink even more milk than last year. And Microsoft, the company who helped to make "computer virus" a household word and cares more about selling the same thing over and over again instead of redesigning an OS that is both easy and secure. And a lot more. The people who have the most to gain by people being stupid are the "experts." And of course, questioning is something that is beaten out of us by the time we get through the first years of public school so there's no chance of a renaissance happening any time soon... at least not without a dark ages preceding it.
The problem is much, much larger than just being aware of meta-data in a picture. And yes, I agree with some here who suggest that "these online services should really have our backs" on this sort of thing, but it's not really in their interests to do so... so why would they?
They could be compromising their privacy.... (Score:2)
...if not their safety, when they post online.
So don't do it. Someone may find out that you exist.
Google has some very bad news for you (Score:3, Informative)
For those who have forgotten, Google is trying to do location based analysis without the geotags - you send them a picture of a place, they tell you where it is (well, what it is for right now). No geotagging necessary.
Of course, Picasa is kind enough to mark each geotagged picture with a google map pin in the preview window - so you at least know which pics have the metadata in the tags.
Have a camera setting (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not just have a camera setting that says "Do not record geotag data within 1 minute of my selected location(s)"? Seems that would be the easiest fix. No extra processing needed.
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Another nice feature would be randomizing the location by _x_ mi/km.
This is odd (Score:4, Funny)
Geotagging isn't the problem (Score:2)
The real problem is that people are uploading their private photos to public places in the first place. It's already an invitation to crime, stalking, and government and business interference in private affairs. Why have people abandoned one of our most cherished rights so easily?
Sure, if you must upload pictures of you getting drunk or your new gadget at least strip the tags, but how about only sharing it with your friends using a more private method instead?
Conditions apply (Score:4, Funny)
[*] Separate purchase of time machine required for viewing geotags on photographs from the future.
Masterminds (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a pretty big site dedicated to the growing of marijuana, where the users post pictures of their grow operations from behind the "protection" of proxies. :)
Just for kicks one day I started checking their pictures. About 20 to 25 percent of them were geotagged. Some of those grows had hundreds, if not thousands of plants. So much for hiding behind a proxy.
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They're out to get you. (Score:2)
Interesting article in bringing to attention unintentional leaks from cameras, and other devices under your control. However it doesn't address unintentional leaks from devices under someone else control concerning you as the subject. For example if I'm in a public space any number of cameras and video devices can record information about me. From the nearly ubiquitous security cameras, to the same cell-phone cameras nearly all phones have (even the cheap phones) with their EXIF date. How about the next You
Er, huh? (Score:2)
What do you take pictures more of?
- Places you DON'T live, like vacation spots or nightlife
- Your house?
Where does your GPS work better?
- Outside
- Inside
This article is glossing over some pretty basic details on why this is not a problem. I don't take pictures of my own house, and if I did, the GPS would not work anyway. All anyone snopping on Flickr can figure out from my geo tags is I have been to Vegas and Spain, and guess what, THEY CAN FIGURE THAT OUT LOOKING AT THE DAMN PHOTO ANYWAY.
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News for Paranoid Cynics (Score:2)
Are you James Bond on a secret spy mission? Are you a pedo on the prowl? Are you a mafia hitman? Or are you just egocentric and paranoid?
No one gives a shit. You're an ant on the ass of an elephant. The elephant doesn't know you exist, much less care about where you went for vacation.
You're so vain you probably think this post is about you. Don't you?
Irrelevant!!! (Score:2)
I think that there is even more info to dig form the comments of posted photos than form the EXIF info.
There is the security risk. Geotags are completely irrelevant in this context.
Re:I was just wondering about that (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes, I was going to recommend jhead [sentex.ca] as well. I haven't used it for deleting EXIF headers, but I have used it to get a list of what focal lengths I've used for all of my photos. It's a handy free utility, and I wish it worked on RAW photos as well.
Re:I was just wondering about that (Score:5, Informative)
$ mogrify -strip image.jpg
Gotta love Slashdot (Score:2)
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jhead is simple command-line tool that manipulates EXIF data.
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...at how unaware some end users are (Score:2)
Photos tagged with the location in which the picture was taken can give away information about the location in which the picture was taken. Who would have thought?
I understand you're trying to point out a tautology, but a lot of end users aren't even aware that photos taken with a camera phone are "tagged with the location in which the picture was taken".
Pictures taken yesterday or a year ago (Score:2)
photos with geotags only convey historical data "This person was abroad on this date" and does not give away times in the future when they are going to be away.
If the photo was taken today or yesterday, it's likely that the family is still on vacation. If the photo was taken 52 or 53 weeks ago, it's an educated guess that the family may be taking another vacation in the same or a similar place.