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larkarrow
Oct 16, 2014, 3:20 AM
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Registered: Dec 27, 2013
Posts: 10
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I just saw this video where anyone good enough with computers can retrieve the exact location of a photo when it was taken. For example, you posted a photo of your daughter playing in her room to your Facebook account. The hackers, and other computer literate child predators, can use that photo to pinpoint the exact location of your daughter's room! This is so scary! There are tons of psychopaths out there and this really bothers me a lot. Can you suggest anything to keep myself and my family protected as much as possible whenever we use the internet? Thanks!
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epoch
Moderator
Oct 17, 2014, 2:05 AM
Post #2 of 5
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Registered: Apr 28, 2005
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Not with every photo.
Now, with your phone, maybe. Only if geolocating is on and the location is stored in the EXIF data. It isn't hard to look at with photo editing software. And yes it may show down to the room where your photo was taken.
Many of the higher-end DSLRs, Mirco-Four Thirds, Mirrorless, and point and shoot cameras have buit in GPS that geotags the location your picture was taken.
Bottom line. If you are not comfortable with sharing your location via photos, you, the owner of the camera, have the option to change the camera settings to not record this data.
Personally, my DSLRs and phone have the feature disabled.
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petsfed
Oct 22, 2014, 6:43 AM
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Registered: Sep 25, 2002
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Dunno if that level of paranoia is really necessary, but whatever floats your boat. As was said, tell your phone/camera not to write that stuff into the headers, and you're good to go.
Edit to add:
As far as masking your IP address goes, it typically can't be localized past a general area (maybe zipcode or larger) without a court order. So you really don't need to mask your IP address unless you've somehow published your home address alongside your IP address. Otherwise, best hackers will get is the address of your internet provider.
(This post was edited by petsfed on Oct 22, 2014, 6:54 AM)
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mojomonkey
Oct 22, 2014, 10:01 PM
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Registered: Aug 13, 2006
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I let the camera record the info - that is often useful for me. However, use software to process the images before posting them to strip the data you don't want included. Particularly if you are a fugitive posting a photo...
Here is a recently submitted photo to this site. This shows you the metadata from the image, and plots the location and direction the camera was facing.
Some sites, like facebook, strip that info from photos. Of course, they already had access to the data if they are the ones you don't want to have it.
So revising,
larkarrow wrote: The hackers, and other computer literate child predators,Anyone with internet access that can use a web browser can use thatsome photo s to pinpoint the exactget a pretty accurate location of your daughter's room!
Another one that has caused embarrassment - sometimes EXIF data includes a smaller version of the original file as a thumbnail. Folks may post them after cropping or adding an overlay to remove some element they don't want shared, but the thumbnail still provides an often usable original.
(This post was edited by mojomonkey on Oct 22, 2014, 10:18 PM)
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