Hi all, I was browsing another forum and I stumbled upon this post which was in regards to a post with pictures taken with OP's cell phone. "Your phone is saving the GPS data for where your photos were taken. You will want to disable that, I can see where you live or where you took these pics. Right near Eagle Rock Reservation." That is scary. Someone can get your location just by the data collected by your cell phone from a photograph.
It is scary, but it is life in the 2000's, I guess. Upon setup of my phones, I always disable it. I just had the need for a new iPhone, and I'm pretty sure it flat out asked me. Though, some smartphones DO produce good, not great, but good, coin images.
It's not just with an iPhone, but with any digital camera that has GPS enabled and embedded in the image data.
If you use a photo editing app like Adobe Lightroom, one of the settings on the export of a file to a .jpg is to selectively remove certain metadata, as show below: As you can see, you basically set-it-and-forget-it. Here are some of the choices: It's a scary world, but being aware of your options allows you some control over the chaos.
Yea well don't feel bad. Even security "experts" screw up. Keep in mind this was from 2012. http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/12/03/john-mcafee-location-exif/ Here is a handy tool (and I am sure there are more) where you can just go mass delete all the exif metatdata from all your pictures. http://www.rlvision.com/exif/about.asp
Not anything new but yes, one (we) should know about such features. Here is an interesting experiment: http://iknowwhereyourcatlives.com/ Make sure you read the "About" page ... Admittedly I often turn location data on when traveling. It's nice to know, on a longer trip for example, where this or that photo was taken. But the default setting is "off" here. Christian
Regardless if you have a new smart phone, or an old 2000's Canon, there will be meta data in the image. Of course, a smart phone is needed for geo-location data
Just an FYI: Photobucket can strip location data from uploaded images if you click the correct options in your account.
Who's paranoid now? I don't even know how to turn on GPS. And I don't plan on knowing. And I never quite figured out the benefit (to me) of starting a CIA guest book account on "social media." I also have this quaint habit of looking up directions on a paper street map.
Ah yes, I vaguely remember those. Paper maps are great for planning trips, or if you decide to take some scenic route. But when it comes to simply getting from A to B ... And yes, of course the manufacturer or phone company of my navigation device knows where I go. But in this case the effect (sort of swarm intelligence) is wanted, and the location data do not go elsewhere. Christian
