Posting pictures of coins online, and that includes Coin Talk as well as grading service registries, can make personal information you'd rather keep private available to all ... unless you're careful. There are two ways images can make personal information public: 1. file name, 2. embedded information. 1. File name information: You may not realize it, but when you upload a picture to most websites, the original file name is retained for all to see. For some websites, it's obvious; the file name is below the image. For most websites, the user can right-click on the picture and then click on Save Image As, and the original file name is automatically suggested as the image file name. So if an image has the file name of 1804_dollar_obverse_Joe_Smith.jpg, then anyone who bothers will know Joe Smith has an interest in 1804 dollars ... maybe owns a few. For some websites, right-clicking the image won't show a Save Image option; however, there are other options that will lead to the file name. This information leak is easy to avoid. Make sure that the file names of images that you upload contain only information that you are prepared for the rest of the world to see. I don't know why websites aren't configured to reassign a randomly chosen name to image files that are uploaded. Perhaps there are good reasons. 2. Embedded information: This information leak is less obvious and harder to deal with. There are two types of embedded information: standard format and stealth. The former is relatively easy to remove; the latter may be impossible. Embedded information is information inside the image file that exists there in addition to the image itself. This information, called metadata, can be as benign as the date and time the image was created. Or more potentially dangerous, such as the GPS coordinates of where the image was taken (like where your home is). These are fairly standard bits of info. If your camera, phone, tablet or computer has been hacked, there can be a lot more: names in your address book, account numbers, passwords, etc. Information in standard format is fairly easy to remove. In Windows, right-click on the image (or select a group of images and do them all at once), then click on Properties, then on Details. At the bottom of the Details window, click on Remove Properties and Personal Information. Then there will be a window that lets you choose to scrub all info or certain types. For some imaging devices, like many phones with the Android operating system, there is an option not to have certain info, like GPS coordinates, added to images. Consider activating the option. Stealthily added information is added by malware or by a bad guy with access to your device. Whatever information the malware or bad guy can find on your device can be encrypted (or not) and attached to image files. The information will not be in the normal metadata format and can't be seen or removed with the technique described above. If you post the image(s), the bad guys and perhaps others can access the information it contains. I'm not aware that this technique has been used extensively, but it's easily done. It's a separate issue but related to the problem of images themselves containing malware or malware masquerading as an image. The best way to avoid this problem is to keep your devices physically secure and keep malware off your devices. Antivirus programs detect only malware; they won't detect an image file to which malware or a bad guy has added personal info. Post images with care! Cal
