
Plotting the Geocoordinates You May Have Accidentally Left Behind in Photos - Thevet
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/this-map-plots-the-geocoordinates-you-may-have-accidentally-left-behind-in-digital-photos
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Vexs
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.

~~~
yoodenvranx
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.

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Vexs
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.

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phreack
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.

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TeMPOraL
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.

~~~
JadeNB
> 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?

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TeMPOraL
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
> 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?

