Did that title scare you? I know when I first found out this I was very worried. I mean…who doesn’t post photo’s online to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other social media outlet? I know I do. I love sharing my day with friends. Well I got an email last week that had this little newsclip in it, watch it by clicking here..In the clip they say uploading photo’s to the internet can be a ROADMAP to your location. My first thought was this is a hoax…So I investigated further by contacting someone who I deem as the expert in everything technical…My sister! Guess what she had to say?
Get ready for a total buzz kill. Here’s the skinny on “geotagging,” as it’s been explained to me. Geotagging embeds the location of where the photo was taken within 15 feet. Still wondering how? Well do you have a smart phone? How about a fairly new digital camera? Well if you do, and you post your photo’s online…you are probably in danger of this new technology.
The video states that, “New technology in camera’s and cell phone can tell exactly where the photo was taken, and it can be just as dangerous as posting your home address for anyone to see.” What the heck?? How does it work?
New camera’s and smart phones embed some code in your photo’s that will put your exact location. If you however, download some software, from a 3rd party app, you could potentially remove the embedded code on your photo’s. Also, it’s not clear whether or not if you save the photo and edit it in say photoshop, if the code is still there or not.
I did notice on some of my own photo’s that a lot of detail was there when I uploaded some photo’s online such as the camera type, and other numbers…never thought it was a geographic code as to where I was when I took the photo. If you’d like more information, read the full story on Wikipedia here on Geotagging. Wow! Can you imagine those folks who lie and post photo’s of celebrities doing things they really weren’t? Oh man…this just got really sticky for those gossip magazines. They’ll be caught and held responsible very quickly now!
Recently, I posted a similar story about Facebook with their new “Face Recognition” software. If you don’t know about that one…man…I suppose the bottom line is, don’t put a photo up online without at the very least re-saving it to your computer, and then uploading it….unless you want people to know where you were when you uploaded it of course.
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