The chances are wherever you were uploading the photo to has more information than just a photo and nothing else. This would prevent someone from being able to access the location the picture was taken that's stored in the EXIF data and make you safe, right? Wrong! Well, probably. There are 2 ways you can easily tackle this problem and most argue the obvious one is to disable Geotagging on your phone. Even with all the EXIF data in the world, if the privacy of the image is assured, then most of the risk is mitigated. The overriding concern here is that the user hasn't properly looked after their online privacy and made these images available to people who shouldn't have access. They could have access to your name, address, home town, places you check in and more without even needing to look into the hidden EXIF data of a picture. Why does this unfavourable person have access to this image in the first place? If the image has been posted to a social media site, or any other site, where the user has no privacy controls setup then there's far more to worry about here than the EXIF data of one picture. It seems a lot of people online report they either simply hit the accept/yes button without fully reading or understanding the prompt or just hit the button out of habit without actually reading what it said at all.Įven if you cast aside the Geotag in the image and any other data along with it, there's still another problem here that's worse in my opinion. This is an option that must be enabled by the user! The chances are most people were prompted about this at some point and that's generally when you first set the pone up or first use the camera. Whilst it is true that almost any modern phone can include a Geotag in a photo, it's worth noting that *none* of them do this by default.
Now, there are quite a few components that make up this scenario so I'm going to break them down. Armed with this image an unfavourable person could identify the location the image was taken and then go there.
Microsoft Pro Photo will let you view, edit and delete EXIF Data, also referred to as metadata.Ī lot of the concern online in news articles, blog posts and discussions on social media sites revolves around parents using their smartphones to take pictures of their children that are then posted somewhere on the Internet. With almost all modern day smart-phones having GPS or location based services, the ability to include a Geotag (the location the picture was taken) in an image is quite widespread.
This can include the date and time it was taken, the make and model of the camera (or phone) and importantly the location the image was taken. This is made possible through the act of Geotagging and the EXIF data stored in images, but what's the real risk and real problem?ĮXIF data, simply put, is information that can be stored in an image file other than the picture itself. I've seen a lot of concern online recently about the possibility of people tracking your physical location using the pictures you post online.