The photo you post to your favorite social networking site could be telling more about you than your choice in wardrobe or the types of friends you have. Behind-the-scenes tagging of photos courtesy of today's smart phones and GPS-enhanced cameras could be giving away your exact location.
It's called geotagging, and many people do not realize their smart phone or camera is embedding a geographic location to the file date on digital images. When these photos are posted to the Web, individuals may inadvertently be giving away the locations to their homes, businesses -- even revealing the routes they take to work simply through the photos they post.
This data is not readily visible to the casual user, so many people may not even know a geotag exists on their photo. Not only can privacy be compromised from tagged images, it could become a safety issue as well.
Individuals who want to know where a person lives and works can simply use the geotag to get a specific geographic location that is generally within 15 feet of where the image was taken. Plug those coordinates into an online mapping site and it's easy to see where a photo was taken in mere minutes.
It is possible to turn off the geotag function of smart phones, but only after navigating through a series of menus that may be complicated and hidden. Sometimes turning off geotagging turns of the phone's GPS capabilities altogether.
Those who post items on Craigslist for sale or publish photos of their children in the yard could be putting their family and belongings at risk. Unless individuals want their whereabouts broadcasted for the world to see, it pays to know about geotags and be smart about what information -- seen and unseen -- is being put online. Furthermore, technology experts warn that multimedia sites like Twitter and YouTube have user-friendly application programming interfaces, or A.P.I.'s. This means someone with a cursory knowledge of writing computer code can create a program to search for geotagged photos.
It's not just Web geeks and hackers to worry about. Tech-savvy thieves and even pedophiles can access private addresses and even learn about the common haunts of people online.
"Mythbusters" host Adam Savage learned the hard way about geotags after he posted a photo of his car parked outside of his home taken with his iPhone to Twitter. The geotag gave away his address. Savage has since moved and turned off the geotag feature on the phone. Other celebrities can be at risk, as well as private individuals who do not want people to know where they live for privacy reasons.
To tell if a photo was geotagged on a PC, right click on the image and go to Properties. Select details and the data will be provided. If a GPS location is provided, you know it has a geotag.
Learn how to turn off the geotag function of phones and cameras by consulting the users' manual or talking to tech experts where the device was purchased.
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