CARLOZ

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'I Can Stalk U' site rasies awareness of inadvertent information sharing when posting photos on-line

Seeded on Thu Feb 24, 2011 7:54 AM EST

Article Source: icanstalku.com

technology, photography, twitter, privacy, camera, web-2-0, smartphone, maps, smart-phone, geotagging, geo-tagging, geotags, geo-tags, jpeg-photos, posting-photos-on-line

Seeded by Carloz

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Everyone loves to post things to their Twitter account. Every day, people post things about the minutiae in their lives, from where they had lunch to what their kids are doing. People also are using services that allow them to post photos of these things. Because after all, a picture is worth a thousand words and isn't limited to 140 characters. This seems great, but did you know that for a lot of folks, whenever they post a photo of their lunch or kids, also included in their thousand words are details about their exact location of where they took the photo?

Now, we love Twitter and posting photos of our lunch, however, we don't feel that enough people realize what kind of data they are posting, albeit inadvertantly. By posting this information, they are allowing their movements to be recorded and analyized by anyone: from a government to a nosy neighbor. After analyzing your photos, someone could find out:

* Where you live
* Who else lives there
* Your commuting patterns
* Where you go for lunch each day
* Who you go to lunch with

Among many other things!

Here are links to another information piece from the site and a video report from WABC New York:.

How to disable Geo-Tagging on your phone

Video report: GPS in cameras and phones creates privacy issue

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Regions: New York

Public Discussion (16)

Carloz

To make people aware that they are posting this information when they are sending out photos and giving them options on how to disable that functionality. By making this information public, we are attempting to get enough exposure to the problem so that we can start to curb its continued use.

Thanks Piletre for e-mailing me the WABC story and making me aware of this.

6 votes

#1 - Thu Feb 24, 2011 7:57 AM EST

McSpocky

Here's a video about this too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmJIhYSsvpc

If you happen to go to this site today (2/25/2011), you can get free software for removing the information from photos. http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/exifcleaner-1-5/

Thanks for sharing this Carloz, I was going to put it up but saw you had it up already. This is something people should be aware of. Clipping to my column.

5 votes

#1.1 - Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:15 AM EST

Carloz

Thanks, McSpocky.

2 votes

#1.2 - Fri Feb 25, 2011 3:06 PM EST

McSpocky

You're welcome. I never knew anything about this until a couple of days ago when someone posted it in a comment. Technology can be great, but it pays to be aware of the problems that come with it.

2 votes

#1.3 - Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:46 AM EST

McSpocky

You can manage exif information in this free graphics program, if you install the plugins with it too. http://www.irfanview.com/

2 votes

#1.4 - Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:50 AM EST

Carloz

Thanks again.

2 votes

#1.5 - Sat Feb 26, 2011 10:50 AM EST

ZenFreedom

Very nice and informative article (would be more informative if the site wasn't blocked over here but I get the gist). I'm gonna make my wife aware of this, thank you Carloz.