Be careful when geotagging your photos

How many of you are geotagging your photos without even realising it. Geotagging basically means using a GPS (Global Positioning System) to work out the exact location you took the photo. People are using this to showcase where they’ve taken pictures of their favourite location but there’s something you need to be careful of. If you don’t switch off geotagging on your mobile phone for private pictures (ie like your home, food you’ve eaten for dinner, your favourite pets) you’re actually giving away your location – where you live.
Cyberstalking is growing dramatically due to the increase usage of social networking tools + GPS enabled phones and by uploading or sending your images, you’re actually revealing your location. So we just want you to be careful and before uploading any pictures to any website on the Internet or sending photos to friends, make sure you’ve disabled geotagging unless you specifically want to use it.
I’ve done some testing and it’s quite scary – most websites like facebook strip this information from the file before publishing it so you’re quite safe. But sending emails with images from the iphone is a different story.

As an example, I picked up my friends Iphone4 and showed them this issue. I went to their photos and selected places… then I showed them on the map where they lived and they freaked out. Imagine losing your phone or if someone borrowed your phone without you realising… there goes your identity which I find very scary.
Still don’t believe me? You can download a software tool called ExifTool that read meta information in files (this will include GPS co-ordinates) and open up a photo you took on your iphone.
If you want to disable geotag on your iphone these are the steps I have found on the Internet (I don’t have an iphone so don’t know whether they work):

- On your iPhone, and select “Settings” from the menu screen.
- Press “General,” and then select “Reset”
- Select the “Reset Location Warnings” option
- Press “Reset Warnings”
- Press and open your camera application on the menu screen. Select “Don’t Allow” when prompted.

So be careful and don’t ADVERTISE your location! You might be leaving footprints without you even realising.

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