careful when you post pictures!! GPS can be a bitch

C

cyborgasm

Well-Known Member
Hey everyone,

This isn't anything new; it has been mentioned on this forum before, but I think it deserves more attention. Digital pictures contain a whole bunch of extra user information data (called 'exif' data.) Often times this is just camera info like focal distance, exposure time, etc. Lots of newer cameras, such as the iphone for example, have built in GPS. And in their exif data they give the GPS coordinates of where the picture was taken.

You may think this sounds paranoid. Perhaps it is. Cops probably won't start hassling you just because of a few bytes of data on a random internet picture. Then again you never know when the schizo down the street might get it into his head to knock on your door with a knife and jack your shit. This isn't some esoteric techie thing that's nearly impossible to decode either - it's remarkably easy.

I downloaded a firefox add-on (Exif Viewer) which allows me to right click on images and 'View Image EXIF Data' as I'm doing to a random RIU pic below.
Picture 11.png

When I do that a pop up window comes up giving me all the info. Including, in this case, GPS coordinates and even a link to Google maps pinpointing the location of a grow. (Often there's even a street view on Google maps that will even show off the front of the freakin' house!) Below is an image of the pop up window containing GPS info for this random pic I found on this forum (for obvious reasons I've obscured that info.)

Picture 12.jpg

Anyway, take what you will from this info. Maybe I'm paranoid, but the GPS stuff kind of alarmed me when I heard about it. There are easy ways to scrub this info from your pics if you look into it.

Grow safe.
 
xivex

xivex

Active Member
This HAS been covered, but due to its utter significance, i agree that it SHOULD be stickied, and this fine gentlemen provided a poignant example of how it works. Good work.

X
 
Serapis

Serapis

Well-Known Member
I just installed it and checked several different pics from different posts and am getting a msg that data may have been removed....
 
PakChild

PakChild

Active Member
yea I found this out on my own when I first started out, was using my friends iPhone and saw it puts points on a map of the location where you took the picture, made me paranoid enough to go out and buy a digital camera, my buddies think i'm dumb having a grow journal on here but its addicting haha and I like to see the progress week to week on how much they've grown, but anyways its a good thing to be paranoid than to think your untouchable, be safe.
 
mwowner15

mwowner15

Well-Known Member
This shit got me very paranoid lool, good thing i dont use my camera phone to take pics of my stuff, but it could have the same effect on digital cameras as well.
 
B

boneheadbob

Well-Known Member
This brings up a topic I wished to post about. How safe do you think it is to keep a journal here. Is'nt everyone a little fearful that it could lead to a knock at the door

or does everyone dismiss it out of hand?

PakChild said:
yea I found this out on my own when I first started out, was using my friends iPhone and saw it puts points on a map of the location where you took the picture, made me paranoid enough to go out and buy a digital camera, my buddies think i'm dumb having a grow journal on here but its addicting haha and I like to see the progress week to week on how much they've grown, but anyways its a good thing to be paranoid than to think your untouchable, be safe.
Click to expand...
 
bobbypyn

bobbypyn

Well-Known Member
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office


Scalable Social Network Analysis (SSNA) aimed at developing techniques based on social network analysis for modeling the key characteristics of terrorist groups and discriminating these groups from other types of societal groups.[14]
Sean McGahan, of Northeastern University said the following in his study of SSNA:
The purpose of the SSNA algorithms program is to extend techniques of social network analysis to assist with distinguishing potential terrorist cells from legitimate groups of people ... In order to be successful SSNA will require information on the social interactions of the majority of people around the globe. Since the Defense Department cannot easily distinguish between peaceful citizens and terrorists, it will be necessary for them to gather data on innocent civilians as well as on potential terrorists.
—Sean McGahan[14
'nuff said.
 
jhughes

jhughes

Member
Well, that is kinda scary, people better go and get their medical cards! But either way, can't people just go to like imageshack.us or photobucket.com and just not use a log in name and just upload the photos and post them here?
 
C

cyborgasm

Well-Known Member


I just installed it and checked several different pics from different posts and am getting a msg that data may have been removed.... ​
Click to expand...
It's true that a lot of pictures give me that message, but not all. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know exactly how it works, but from what I've noticed it looks like the pics which are embedded as thumbnails that you click to make them expand, those pics all seem to have the exif data scrubbed - maybe something with how the forum uploads them? But pics that are embedded in the post not as thumbnails, those often have exif data. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about here's some screenshots of forum posts with the two different ways pics are embedded:

pics embedded as thumbnails (no exif data):
Picture 11.jpg

Pic embedded directly (has exif data)
Picture 12.jpg
I'm not sure what determines whether your pic gets embedded as a thumbnail or directly.
 
csj

csj

Active Member
Soooo glad I couldn't figure out how to get my phone pictures onto the computer!!!!!!!
 
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