Upload Pic to Find Someone Who Looks Like You
While GPS tagged photos are handy for always knowing where you took a photo, location data embedded in photos does take unsettling privacy and security implications. Should you be worried about the risk of people tracking you down via photos you mail service online?
Dear How-To Geek,
You lot guys need to help me out. My mom forwarded me this news clip which (I presume) some other one of her friends with every bit over-protective grandmotherly traits forwarded to her. Essentially information technology's a clip from an NBC news segment highlighting how piece of cake it is to extract the location from a photo. My mom is freaking out insisting that I'm putting my kids at risk because I put photos of them on Facebook and some abductor is going to come climb in their window.
Is this news clip but scare mongering to become people to lookout man the ten o'clock news or is information technology something I actually need to exist worried about? I'd actually similar to calm my mom down (and more sure I'k not actually posting my personal information like that all over the web).
Sincerely,
Sorta Paranoid Now
Earlier we delve into the technical side of your issue, we experience compelled to accost the social side. Yep, everyone is worried that something bad is going to happen to their kids (or grandkids), but realistically speaking, even if every photo nosotros all posted online had our full abode address printed right on the front like a watermark, the probability of annihilation bad happening to whatsoever of us (including our kids) is still well-nigh zero. The earth merely isn't full of hordes of awful people we oft permit ourselves to believe information technology is.
Even though the news does a proficient job making us experience like nosotros alive in a terrifying world filled with kid snatchers and stalkers, the actual crime stats pigment a different story. Vehement crime has been falling in the U.s.a. for decades and of the 800,000 or then missing children reported every yr in the U.S., the vast majority of them are either teenage runaways or children taken past parents engaged in custody battles; just around 100 of them are your stereotypical stranger-snatches-child scenario.
That means stranger abductions account for only 0.000125% of all the nether-eighteen missing persons cases in the U.S. and, based on Census data indicating approximately 74 million people aged nascence-18 in the U.S., it ways stranger abductions bear on roughly 0.00000135% of the children. Yet no news producer has always boosted their evening news rating by leading with "Tonight at x, nosotros'll talk well-nigh how the run a risk of your child being abducted by a stranger is 1 hundred-thousandth of a pct college than them getting struck past lightning!"
Now, while nosotros hope you take the above information to center, we still understand that it'southward expert security practice to non put our personal information all over the spider web and to command who has access to the information we share; social side addressed, let'south expect at the technical side of things and how yous can control the menstruum of information.
Where Is The Location Data Stored?
Photos take EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data. EXIF data is simply a standardized meta data set of non-visual data attached to photos; in analog terms call back of it like the blank back of a photograph where you can write down data about the photo similar the appointment, fourth dimension, what camera you took the photo with, etc.
This data is, 99% of the fourth dimension, extremely handy stuff. Thanks to the EXIF data, your photo organizer app (similar Picasa or Lightroom) tin tell you useful information virtually your photos such as shutter speed, focal length, whether or non the flash fired, etc. This data can be enormously useful if you're learning photography and want to review what settings you used when taking specific photos.
Information technology's also the same data that allows for bang-up tricks like searching Flickr based on which camera took the photo and seeing what the most pop models are (as seen in the chart higher up). Professional photographers love EXIF data because information technology makes managing large photo collections significantly easier.
Some cameras and smart phones, but not all, tin can embed location data within the EXIF. This is the 1% of the time where some people detect the whole embedded EXIF information affair to be problematic. Sure information technology's fun if yous're a professional lensman or serious hobbyist and you want to actively geotag your photos to announced on something like Flickr's globe map, just for well-nigh people the thought that the exact location (within 30 anxiety or so) where their photos were taken is linked to the photo is a little unsettling.
Hither is where information technology pays to be enlightened of the capabilities of the equipment yous're shooting your photos with and to utilize tools to ensure that what your equipment is saying is happening, is actually happening.
How Do I Disable Geotagging?
The beginning step is to make up one's mind whether or not the camera yous're shooting with even embeds location information. Nearly stand-alone digital cameras, even expensive DSLRs, exercise not. GPS-tagging is still a new plenty and novel plenty technology that the cameras that feature it advertise it heavily. Nikon, for example, didn't innovate a DSLR with congenital-in GPS tagging until October of 2013. DSLRs with geotagging remain so rare that almost professionals who want information technology just buy a small add together-on device for their camera to provide it. GPS tagging is slightly more common in point-and-shoot cameras, but still fairly rare. We recommend looking up the specific model camera yous own and confirming whether or non it has GPS-tagging and how to disable it, if so.
Smartphones are, however, a completely different story. One of the big selling points for modern smartphones is the built in GPS. That'southward how your phone can give you authentic directions, tell you there is a Starbucks effectually the corner, and otherwise provide location-aware services. Equally such, it'due south very common for photos taken with a smartphone to have embedded GPS-data because the phones all send with GPS chips right in them. But because the phone has a GPS chip doesn't mean yous have to allow it to tag your photos.
If you're sporting an iOS device, it'south easy to not only plow off geotagging, but to limit which application tin can access location data on an application-past-application basis.
In iOS 7, navigate to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services. There y'all'll find a general Location Services toggle (which we recommend leaving on, equally and so many features of the iPhone/iPad rely on location), and so below it, equally seen in the screenshot to a higher place, private toggles for individual apps. If you toggle "Camera" off, then the camera will no longer take admission to the location information and won't embed it in the EXIF data of the photos.
For Android, there are 2 ways to approach the issue. You tin get into the camera app itself and disable geotagging. The verbal route to the setting varies based on the version of Android and the photographic camera you have, simply it's typically (from inside the camera app) Settings/Bill of fare -> Location Icon (tap the icon to toggle the location services on or off):
The alternative method is similar to disabling Location Services on iOS. Yous tin can go into your phone's general Settings -> Location Access and turn off "Access to my location". Unfortunately, different iOS, in Android it'due south an all or zippo setting. Given how useful GPS data is for other applications (like Google Maps), we'd recommend sticking with toggling the geotagging from within the camera app.
How Tin can I Confirm The Photos Aren't Geotagged?
Information technology's all well and good to adjust the settings in your photographic camera or phone, but how can you be sure that your photos are actually free of GPS/location information? Smart geeks trust but verify. The easiest way to check without having to install any special software, is to simply check the properties of the photo on your computer. We took two photos, 1 with geotagging turned on and with with geotagging turned off, to demonstrate.
Here is what the geotagged photo looks similar when the file properties are examined in Windows:
Here's a photo taken moments later with the same photographic camera, with geotagging toggled off:
The entire GPS information chunk is missing; the EXIF report jumps right from advanced photographic camera data to bones file information.
Most photo organizers like Windows Live Photo Gallery, Picasa, Lightroom, even lightweight apps like Infranview (with a free plugin) will read EXIF metadata.
How Can I Remove Location Data?
If you lot've successfully turned off geotagging for future photos, you still have (assuming geotagging was previously enabled for your camera) all the quondam ones to deal with. If you lot programme on uploading or sharing older geotagged photos, it'south wise to strip the information out of them before sharing them.
You may have noticed, in the previous section, that the file property box in Windows has a little "Remove Properties and Personal Information" link at the bottom of the interface. If you're planning on uploading photos, yous can highlight all the photos y'all intend to upload, right click, select Properties, and then bulk strip the data using that "Remove Properties" link in the detailed file view.
You'll exist prompted with the post-obit window:
Here you lot tin can opt to completely strip the files of their EXIF data; this first option volition brand a copy of the files with all the EXIF data removed. You tin likewise keep the original files and selectively remove the metadata (this pick permanently removes the selected information from the files with no fill-in copy). If you desire to accept advantage of the EXIF data reading in an application or online service, merely y'all don't want to share your location, you can select this pick and strip out only the GPS data.
Unfortunately there is no congenital-in easy EXIF data stripper in OSX or Linux. That said, ExifTool is a free cantankerous-platform tool for Windows, Bone X, and Linux that can batch process photos and change/remove their EXIF data.
If all your geotagged photos are on your mobile device and you don't desire to put them all on your computer to work with them, there'south an boosted pick. PixelGarde is a gratis application available for both Windows and OS X every bit well as Android and iOS devices. Using the application it's easy to strip EXIF data in bulk right from your device.
Ultimately, while the actual take a chance of harm befalling yourself or your family unit equally a result of EXIF information is pretty small (particularly if you lot're only posting photos to social networks where y'all're communicating with friends and family), it certainly doesn't hurt to strip the data. It's easy to plough the feature off in your camera or phone, it's easy to remove it after the fact, and unless y'all're a photographer who needs or wants to geotag photos for precision logging and display, most of us are content to stick with using our memories to call up the the photos were in fact taken in our own backyard.
Take a pressing tech question? Shoot us an email at inquire@howtogeek.com and we'll practise our best to respond information technology.
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/179777/ask-htg-can-people-really-find-me-using-photos-i-post-online/
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