Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Revealing Your Location with Photos


Many people knowingly share their location with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pokemon Go and countless other apps. However there are probably just as many people who are unaware that they are sharing their location on-line, either because they have forgotten that they agreed to it, or they were unaware what they agreed to when they blindly ticked to accept an app's terms and conditions.

There are probably even more people who are unaware that they are sharing their location every time they share or post a photo online. Accidental Geography is a good reminder that the metadata you share when you post a photograph online can include the location of where that photo was taken.

Accidental Geography maps photos that have been posted to Wordpress blogs by users who haven't removed the geo-tagged data added by their digital cameras and /or phones.


A slightly more polished and humorous warning of accidentally revealing your location by sharing photos online is I Know Where Your Cat Lives.

I Know Where Your Cat Lives displays pictures of cats on a Google Map. The pictures of the cats come from popular photo sharing websites and the locations are based on the data hidden in the cat photo metadata.

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