I recently received an email that stated the following:
The photos you take on many smartphones encrypt the GPS location that the image was taken at onto the photo.
This allows anyone who is viewing your photo to locate where it was taken.
Thus a photo of your child, taken inside their bedroom, can be deciphered to reveal the EXACT location of that bedroom, or backyard, or playground, ect!! [sic]
You may have received a similar message. Is there any truth to it? Should you be concerned? Let’s dig in and take a look.
When you take pictures on an “old fashioned” camera, the kind that uses film rather than digital storage cards, you get more information that just the picture when you snap a shot. Some film cameras have an option to “stamp” a date and possibly the time onto the photo itself, others don’t, but there’s more information that just that. Film cameras, as their name implies use film. This film can have various information printed on it including the brand of film (Kodak, FujiFilm, etc.), the lot, the serial number, and even the number of the image on the roll. When you have your film developed even more information is printed on the back of the photo: the date and time the photo was developed, the location of the developing company, the serial number of the developed roll, what kind of paper was used, and more. All this information is necessary to ensure quality and fix problems when they occur. Often this information is hidden or obscured from view, because it’s not really important to you when you view the picture.
All of this information is called “meta-data”, or data about the data. The “data” in this case is the image itself. The “meta-data” is the serial number, the brand, and all the other information that describes characteristics of the photo. Even what you write on the back of the picture (e.g., “Jim and Sally, Grand Canyon, 2010″) can be considered meta-data.
Digital cameras do the same sort of thing, but they include a LOT more meta-data, such as the date and time the photo was taken, they type of camera used, the color pallet used, shutter speed, etc.
Now, using intelligent programs you can sort your photos not only by name (which isn’t all that useful since they’re typically something like “DCM240084327.jpeg”), but by the data they were taken.
You see, some cameras have GPS chips in them. Most of today’s smartphones with cameras in them also have a GPS chip included. That lets you do some cool things. If you enable the GPS feature a “geo-location” entry is added to the meta-data.
Now you can sort your pictures by location, too! So if you want all the pictures of your vacation to Disneyland, you can do that, because your smartphone knew it was in Disneyland when it took the picture. Additionally, you can view your pictures overlaid on a map so you can, for example, see a log of your trek across the country on Route 66. Pretty cool!
Since smartphones are generally connected to the web you can upload your photos to your Twitter or Facebook friends, or post them on Flickr or Picasa easily, from virtually anywhere.
Those uploaded pictures also include all the meta-data — including the geo-location.
Now people can know where you live, where you work, what parks you take your kids to, what friends your kids are visiting (your kids have a smartphone, don’t they?), and even when you’re on vacation and your home is empty.
So what do you do? First off, don’t panic. They sky is not falling! This is just another one of those “what do I need to do to ensure my privacy” things. If you’re using an Android-powered smartphone, chances are this feature is turned off by default, if you want the geo-location information you’ll probably have to manually turn it on.
BUT! Before you upload a photo to any sharing site, you may want to consider what other information you’re passing along.
Thanks: Chris from AVOW
