Warning if you take photos on your cell phone

[Orpheus]

Warning if you take photos on your cell phone this is scary.

http://kyeos.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/w ... ell-phone/

[Orpheus]

Especially important with those of you with young children..

[Kendhni]

It is another instance of the media suddenly realising what some of those features in technology actually mean ... several years after everybody else has figured it out .. and blowing it out of proportion.
It has been possible to track smartphones virtually from the day they were created. This, and information held in pictures, has helped the police to solve many crimes over the last couple of decades (or provide alibis to the innocent).

This does not just affect smartphones but can affect any photographic device (depending on features). One of the latest features being included in many cameras is GPS positioning, the same as in smart phones, and it means that GPS information is stored within the picture (in what is known as 'EXIF ' data) ... and naturally the correct software (pretty much any modern photographic program) can read that information and even, at a click, convert it into a google map ... as well as displaying the day, date, time and other information about the picture.

[Kendhni]

BTW, if you want something really scarey, a colleague of mine has a twitter (I think) add on loaded on his phone. If he stays in the same place for more than 20 minutes then it pops up a message saying (something along the lines of) 'I see you are in The Good Food restaurant at 14 High Street, Manchester, do you want to tweet this?'.

[Delboy]

If you are using GPS on your camera, tablet etc, and don't want the location of where your photo's are taken, go into settings and turn it off for camera.

[david63]

Without looking at the settings I suspect that this sort of information is turned on by default - the ulterior motive being to use your location for marketing purposes. This type, and many other, of setting should, in my opinion, be turned off by default and then those who want to use such features can turn it on.

[Orpheus]

BTW, if you want something really scarey, a colleague of mine has a twitter (I think) add on loaded on his phone. If he stays in the same place for more than 20 minutes then it pops up a message saying (something along the lines of) 'I see you are in The Good Food restaurant at 14 High Street, Manchester, do you want to tweet this?'.

Wow Ken now that is scary

[Orpheus]

Without looking at the settings I suspect that this sort of information is turned on by default - the ulterior motive being to use your location for marketing purposes. This type, and many other, of setting should, in my opinion, be turned off by default and then those who want to use such features can turn it on.

Totally agree david63

[Not so ancient mariner]

BTW, if you want something really scarey, a colleague of mine has a twitter (I think) add on loaded on his phone. If he stays in the same place for more than 20 minutes then it pops up a message saying (something along the lines of) 'I see you are in The Good Food restaurant at 14 High Street, Manchester, do you want to tweet this?'.

What I don't understand is why anyone should feel the need to tell uncle Tom Cobbley & all that they are in MacDonalds (or wherever) in the first place.......! Because they can do it I suppose.

[Kendhni]

Never understood that one either nsam

[Mervyn and Trish]

Nor me. I'm not on Twitter, but find Facebook useful for keeping in tough with some of my friends. In fact just used it to book a restaurant. But I'd never dream of using it to keep telling people where I am.

(I'm at home at the moment, by the way)

[david63]

Too much information

[Silver_Shiney]

Warning if you take photos on your cell phone this is scary.

http://kyeos.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/w ... ell-phone/

Just tried to follow this link and told it's gone.....

[david63]

Warning if you take photos on your cell phone this is scary.

http://kyeos.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/w ... ell-phone/

Just tried to follow this link and told it's gone.....

So it has - very strange as it was certainly there earlier

[sunsetsail2night]

Thanks Alan - thought it was just me who couldn't open this link. Wonder why it was taken off - perhaps it was meant to be secret information!!

Brenda

[Silver_Shiney]

Thanks Alan - thought it was just me who couldn't open this link. Wonder why it was taken off - perhaps it was meant to be secret information!!

Brenda

Obviously someone, somewhere, from Conspiracies 'R' Us didn't want us to know the little secret.....

[wolfie]

Maybe it was taken off as it actually showed, in the first few seconds, how one could trace an address via a mobile phone? One meant to get back to it later tonight, shucks!!!

[Silver_Shiney]

Maybe it was taken off as it actually showed, in the first few seconds, how one could trace an address via a mobile phone? One meant to get back to it later tonight, shucks!!!

Personally, I think George Orwell only told half the story!!

[Not so ancient mariner]

Maybe it was taken off as it actually showed, in the first few seconds, how one could trace an address via a mobile phone? One meant to get back to it later tonight, shucks!!!

Personally, I think George Orwell only told half the story!!

Not surprising really, if you think what mobile phones were like back in 1984! Technology has come a long way since then.

[Kendhni]

Maybe it was taken off as it actually showed, in the first few seconds, how one could trace an address via a mobile phone? One meant to get back to it later tonight, shucks!!!

Wolfie, you missed nothing, it is one of the worst kept secrets in the IT industry ... any camera that has geotagging capabilities will detail it in their documentation as will any software that can read it.

To be honest it is the hgih-tech equivalent of seeing a picture of someone in front of a well known landmark and then complaining that you know where they are. The difference is that in today's society people are so desperate that they put their every thought and action on the likes of Facebook and Twitter along with pictures to prove it.

[Kendhni]

It appears the tinfoil hat media are out in force with yesterdays stories .. first passwords in browsers; then geo tagging in cameras and now... they are now complaining about smart TVs and saying a burglar could turn your lights out story here

Personally speaking I have a high tech device known as a light switch which resolves the issue and even if that fails I have two dogs, one of which is trained to bite on command ... failing that I have other measures that could provide a very miserable state-dependent continued existence for anyone found n my property.

[david63]

Whilst these "hacks" are theoretically possibly what the media fails to say is that the hacker would, in the majority of cases, probably need to be in your garden in order to do anything - such is the range of most home wifi kit that is on the market today.

[Peter D]

We subscribe to a Science & Technology magazine. A few months ago there was an article about aps. Seems a department of NASA created an ap and asked some of their staff to download and trail it for them, 'just to see if it would work'. What they were not told was it contained a programme that switch on their camera, took a series of photos at various times of the day and downloaded those photos back to the department. All with no trace being left on the phone/ipad.

The results were better than they hoped. Along with the normal photographs of friends, their homes etc, they also had photos of bank statements, showing all their details, photos of their work computers showing in some cases classified documents on screen and lots more.

NASA said the ap was nothing special, it used the Android software and could be made by someone with just a basic knowledge of programming.

Makes you think...

[Romig1]

I watched the video and try as I might, I can't find an option to disable the gps etc for the camera individually. It either is all on or all off.

[Romig1]

I watched the video and try as I might, I can't find an option to disable the gps etc for the camera individually. It either is all on or all off.

Found it (after another 10 minutes of searching). It was located in the camera application, under settings...option for "gps tag"...on or off.

After all that...it was already set as "off"