Slashdot Mirror
The Hidden Security Risk of Geotags
pickens writes "The NY Times reports that security experts and privacy advocates have begun warning consumers about the potential dangers of geotags, which are embedded in photos and videos taken with GPS-equipped smartphones and digital cameras. By looking at geotags of uploaded photos, 'you can easily find out where people live, what kind of things they have in their house and also when they are going to be away,' says one security expert. Because the location data is not visible to the casual viewer, the concern is that many people may not realize it is there; and they could be compromising their privacy, if not their safety, when they post geotagged media online."
Might want to take a look at jhead. jhead -purejpg will, as the name suggests, strip everything that isn't actually the image.
http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead is a nice Exif Jpeg camera setting parser and thumbnail remover. Try it and get scared. Geotags are new, but the problem has been there for years. The "hidden" parts of images give away camera model, camera time, camera serial number and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Always open and save images in some editor such as GIMP before uploading them to the Internet(s). This is a good idea anwyay as viewers will generally be more happy if you crop the picture, perhaps adjust the color balance etc.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
This is why upload services should simply just strip out the un-needed info of the pictures. The original pictures still have the sometimes useful geolocation data, but your Facebook pictures won't.
But is it wise to be trusting your services (i.e. Facebook) to take these extra steps to protect your privacy? Wouldn't it make more sense to have an educated consumer base who can be careful what they upload in the first place? At the very least, the value of this information to marketers would make it unlikely that free, online services like Facebook would simply throw this valuable data away. It would make more sense for consumer electronic devices to do a better job of informing the user of what information is "hidden" in the media files they create, with a default off option for anything "hidden".
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I always use IrfanView to pre-process my pictures before uploading them anywhere. You need to do that anyway (original pictures are usually huge 4000+ pixels wide and forums usually limit you to less than 1280px). When you're saving the image, it shows check boxes to remove all extra information from the pictures (usually camera model and shooting options and so on). Easy. And yeah, it's an awesome and light image viewer and you can edit images too.
Or, you can just use ImageMagick:
$ mogrify -strip image.jpg
Palm trees and 8
Yup, and it recompresses the image when you do so. See suggestions here for ways of stripping it without recompressing.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.