7 ms·

Plotting the Geocoordinates You May Have Accidentally Left Behind in Photos

23 points by Thevet 10y ago

phreack 10y ago
This shows really well that if you care about privacy, you should always take the precaution of cleaning up any photo you upload to the internet of Exif tags and metadata.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  To be honest - if you care about privacy, you should not post any photos[0]. Hell, if you really care about privacy, you should not take any (digital) photos at all[1]. I believe that to be a privacy-conscious person, one has to grasp the range of information one's every action leaves around. Which is way broader than most people seem to imagine. C.f. Vexs's top-level comment here. I'm trying to grasp this phenomenon - why would people think that people will see only the one intended thing on the photo, and then get creeped out if someone focuses on something else? It seems to be connected with a common creativity blocker (and stupidity promoter) - thinking that items have inherent purpose and cannot be used beyond it. The kind of thinking that makes people give up on repairing a thing because they don't have the proper screwdriver, even though they have half a dozen knives in the kitchen that could do the work just fine. What I find similar here is projection of human intent onto the real world. In the repair case, it's projecting the intent of the tool makers (and merchants) onto the tools themselves (screwdriver is for unscrewing screws, vegetable knives is for cutting vegetables) like if they were unbreakable laws of physics. The privacy case seems to be projecting your own intent for the photo onto the photo itself. Like, thinking "this photo is intended to show to my close friends how cool and pretty I am", and then getting offended ("it's creepy!") that someone notices some details of the background. -- [0] - Or at least, for goodness' sake, photoshop the living shit out of them. Like, heavily blur and distort anything that is not your face. [1] - That's "NSA paranoia"-level privacy, but for some people it can be a realistic threat model.
  - kwhitefoot 10y ago
    > It's projecting the intent of the tool makers (and merchants) onto the tools themselves (screwdriver is for unscrewing screws, vegetable knives is for cutting vegetables) like if they were unbreakable laws of physics. As a lapsed physicist (now developing software for electrical engineering) I am often bemused by this sort of thing. But after some thought I concluded that it is to some extent an artefact of education. In my own field I often see people generate over complicated solutions for the same reasons. It seems to me that the physicist's way of working is best: assume that everything is an instance of the same type until proven otherwise, resist the temptation to create new entities and explanations, generalise. But my colleagues with engineering degrees have exactly the opposite behaviour: treat every object and situation as special.
  - JadeNB 10y ago
    > Hell, if you really care about privacy, you should not take any (digital) photos at all[1]. > [1] - That's "NSA paranoia"-level privacy, but for some people it can be a realistic threat model. Assuming you do use a digital camera (so there is no developer involved), and your camera is not wireless enabled (so that the only way to disseminate the photos is for you to elect to do it), what is the threat model here?
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Yay, you're right, I forgot that those even exist. I think older digital cameras may be safe. That said, it's very much a corner case - after all, a typical person will eventually plug the camera to the computer for viewing or archiving purposes.
      - JadeNB 10y ago
        > That said, it's very much a corner case - after all, a typical person will eventually plug the camera to the computer for viewing or archiving purposes. Sorry; in fact that's what I meant to ask. Is a wired connection to a non-networked computer from a non-wireless enabled digital camera safe, or is there some non-obvious threat even there?
Vexs 10y ago
Something I realized a while ago is that even if there isn't EXIF data left behind, you can pretty easily track a lot of photos- I've seen pictures of houses with readable licence plates in the parking lot, or a street name visible, house numbers, etc. If you really want to hide yourself, you have to try pretty hard to obscure data. Consider one thing I saw- the guy said he lived in north Dakota publicly, and had a photo looking out of his garage. Visible was the street name on a signpost, and the house number across from him. Completely innocuous, but it's way more than enough to narrow him down completely. EXIF is easy, but to stay anon properly is hard.
- stevekemp 10y ago
  Sometimes it can be the smallest of things: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/21/us/project-vic-child-abuse/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/21/us/project-vic-child-abuse...
- yoodenvranx 10y ago
  There is/was a subreddit dedicated to this. You could post a picture and the other users had to guess the location of the picture. Unfortunately I can't remember its name.
  - Vexs 10y ago
    There's also a number of browser games that do the same thing- geoguesser being the big one. Paranoid idea is that the NSA could use these online games to do... something.
- CM30 10y ago
  Perhaps the solution to this might be to use a blue/green screen for anything important? Like they do in movies, and ideally with a fictional location or other decoy setting in the background. Of course, that wouldn't work for people landing landscape photos, but it might work for say, someone posting an image confirming their identity or showing a document or item they're in possession of.

23 points by Thevet 10y ago

This shows really well that if you care about privacy, you should always take the precaution of cleaning up any photo you upload to the internet of Exif tags and metadata.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
To be honest - if you care about privacy, you should not post any photos[0]. Hell, if you really care about privacy, you should not take any (digital) photos at all[1]. I believe that to be a privacy-conscious person, one has to grasp the range of information one's every action leaves around. Which is way broader than most people seem to imagine. C.f. Vexs's top-level comment here. I'm trying to grasp this phenomenon - why would people think that people will see only the one intended thing on the photo, and then get creeped out if someone focuses on something else? It seems to be connected with a common creativity blocker (and stupidity promoter) - thinking that items have inherent purpose and cannot be used beyond it. The kind of thinking that makes people give up on repairing a thing because they don't have the proper screwdriver, even though they have half a dozen knives in the kitchen that could do the work just fine. What I find similar here is projection of human intent onto the real world. In the repair case, it's projecting the intent of the tool makers (and merchants) onto the tools themselves (screwdriver is for unscrewing screws, vegetable knives is for cutting vegetables) like if they were unbreakable laws of physics. The privacy case seems to be projecting your own intent for the photo onto the photo itself. Like, thinking "this photo is intended to show to my close friends how cool and pretty I am", and then getting offended ("it's creepy!") that someone notices some details of the background. -- [0] - Or at least, for goodness' sake, photoshop the living shit out of them. Like, heavily blur and distort anything that is not your face. [1] - That's "NSA paranoia"-level privacy, but for some people it can be a realistic threat model.
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  > It's projecting the intent of the tool makers (and merchants) onto the tools themselves (screwdriver is for unscrewing screws, vegetable knives is for cutting vegetables) like if they were unbreakable laws of physics. As a lapsed physicist (now developing software for electrical engineering) I am often bemused by this sort of thing. But after some thought I concluded that it is to some extent an artefact of education. In my own field I often see people generate over complicated solutions for the same reasons. It seems to me that the physicist's way of working is best: assume that everything is an instance of the same type until proven otherwise, resist the temptation to create new entities and explanations, generalise. But my colleagues with engineering degrees have exactly the opposite behaviour: treat every object and situation as special.
- JadeNB 10y ago
  > Hell, if you really care about privacy, you should not take any (digital) photos at all[1]. > [1] - That's "NSA paranoia"-level privacy, but for some people it can be a realistic threat model. Assuming you do use a digital camera (so there is no developer involved), and your camera is not wireless enabled (so that the only way to disseminate the photos is for you to elect to do it), what is the threat model here?
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Yay, you're right, I forgot that those even exist. I think older digital cameras may be safe. That said, it's very much a corner case - after all, a typical person will eventually plug the camera to the computer for viewing or archiving purposes.
    - JadeNB 10y ago
      > That said, it's very much a corner case - after all, a typical person will eventually plug the camera to the computer for viewing or archiving purposes. Sorry; in fact that's what I meant to ask. Is a wired connection to a non-networked computer from a non-wireless enabled digital camera safe, or is there some non-obvious threat even there?

Vexs 10y ago

Something I realized a while ago is that even if there isn't EXIF data left behind, you can pretty easily track a lot of photos- I've seen pictures of houses with readable licence plates in the parking lot, or a street name visible, house numbers, etc. If you really want to hide yourself, you have to try pretty hard to obscure data. Consider one thing I saw- the guy said he lived in north Dakota publicly, and had a photo looking out of his garage. Visible was the street name on a signpost, and the house number across from him. Completely innocuous, but it's way more than enough to narrow him down completely. EXIF is easy, but to stay anon properly is hard.

stevekemp 10y ago
Sometimes it can be the smallest of things: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/21/us/project-vic-child-abuse/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/21/us/project-vic-child-abuse...
yoodenvranx 10y ago
There is/was a subreddit dedicated to this. You could post a picture and the other users had to guess the location of the picture. Unfortunately I can't remember its name.
- Vexs 10y ago
  There's also a number of browser games that do the same thing- geoguesser being the big one. Paranoid idea is that the NSA could use these online games to do... something.
CM30 10y ago
Perhaps the solution to this might be to use a blue/green screen for anything important? Like they do in movies, and ideally with a fictional location or other decoy setting in the background. Of course, that wouldn't work for people landing landscape photos, but it might work for say, someone posting an image confirming their identity or showing a document or item they're in possession of.