

Christmas Geotagging - thedg
http://www.tommycollison.com/blog/2014/12/24/christmas-geotagging

======
jzwinck
Does anyone here remember those huge catalogs of everyone's home address? I
recall they were full of yellow and white pages.

I'm not sure what the point is here...if someone knows your name they can
often simply look up your home address online (or in an anachronism).

Even _social security numbers_ are available online for people who have died:
[http://ssdmf.info/](http://ssdmf.info/)

I can sympathize with the idea that people should be able to live private
lives, but what Instagram is doing doesn't seem particularly notable.

~~~
geofft
The argument isn't "Instagram is publishing people's locations," it's "People
are allowing lots of services, Instagram among them, to publish their
location, and it's harder to participate in modern society while reliably
opting out of all of them."

It used to be the case that you could call up the phone company and say,
please leave me out of the phone book. It still is. But there are so many more
ways to learn your address today, and as always with security, it only takes
one oversight to be compromised.

There's nothing unique about what Instagram is doing. They're one of several
services other than the phone company that can leak your location if you're
not being constantly vigilant. They're _not_ notable, and that's the real
story.

~~~
rtpg
actually, it's really easy to avoid publishing your location. Turn off GPS.

This precludes Google Maps usage, though, which is frustrating to say the
least.

I share frustrations with Facebook pinging for my location on my phone when
I'm not doing anything linked to my location. But here, on Instagram, there's
a very obvious "Add to Photo Map" button (which is off by default!), so these
people opted in to this.

~~~
userbinator
_This precludes Google Maps usage, though, which is frustrating to say the
least._

You can use Google Maps and its GPS feature without a Google account. Then
Google knows where your phone is, and you know where you are, but Google
doesn't know who you are.

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kybernetyk
I've got a friend who works as a correctional officer in a German "open
prison". When the inmates leave for home on weekends some of them are
forbidden from consuming alcohol, drugs, contact certain people, visit certain
areas.

According to my friend the most effective tool to check up on those inmates is
Facebook. Quite a few of them just can't resist to post drunk party pictures,
brag about stuff they shouldn't be doing, etc.

Another way they use Facebook is to detect if someone's using a mobile phone -
which are forbidden on the compound: Simply check the inmates' profiles and
see which inmates who are not on leave are online.

There's that quote that says that Facebook made possible what KGB, Stasi and
the likes couldn't ever dream to achieve. So yeah ...

~~~
hnriot
"There's that quote that says that Facebook made possible what KGB, Stasi and
the likes couldn't ever dream to achieve." \- you only have to look at who
originally funded [1] Facebook to see why.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/25-cutting-edge-companies-
fun...](http://www.businessinsider.com/25-cutting-edge-companies-funded-by-
the-central-intelligence-agency-2012-8)

------
akerl_
So Instagram geotags photos when the user agrees to enable geotagging. And
photos on public feeds are public.

I'm not seeing how this is unexpected or newsworthy. It just sounds like there
are folks out there who don't consider their location to be a secret. Folks
who do are able to communicate that by denying the geotagging permission.

~~~
geofft
How many folks who answer "yes" to geotagging actually know what they're
saying yes to? Are there any who say "yes" because they click yes to all
dialog boxes?

How many of them intend to publicize the location of pretty pictures they take
while traveling, but haven't thought about publicizing their home address?

Note that even Foursquare, bastion of not considering your location a secret,
fuzzes home addresses/GPS locations if you somehow decide it's a good idea to
check in to your home, even though they publish exact locations of everywhere
else you go.

I'm sure there are a number of users who are intentionally geotagging all
their pictures, and thinking about the fact they do so every time they hit
publish. The author probably just doesn't expect that that number is 100%.

~~~
bennettfeely
This was (or maybe still is) one of the most troubling things about Twitter's
location services feature. When someone tweets and chooses to share their
location, the label appears something vague like "Pittsburgh" or "New York
City".

They may not be aware that the precise coordinates of where the tweet was
sent, possibly narrowing down not just where they are, but even what room they
are in, is shared with anyone and everyone.

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userbinator
I think geotagging, like other image metadata, is far less obvious to the
general public than it should be because the location information isn't
directly visible most of the time; maybe if cameras that geotagged photos
showed their GPS coordinates in the same way that timestamps are shown, people
would get the idea.

It's funny how many people will think you're a "hacker" and be very shocked if
you reply to a geotagged photo they casually sent with a map pointing to
exactly where it was taken. :-)

~~~
tedunangst
The default Photos app on iOS displays the location directly above the
timestamp.

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downandout
This is actually a pretty rudimentary use of Instagram's location features. On
Friday I am releasing a site where you can monitor specific physical addresses
for Instagram posts and get alerts in realtime - regardless of who posts them.
Right now I am working on some pre-built feeds for celebrity homes (see inside
celebrity holiday parties etc), major concerts and sports events, and news
events (protests in New York etc).

Because Instagram geotags by default, it poses some really interesting privacy
challenges and tradeoffs. If you are privacy sensitive, shutoff Instagram's
access to your location.

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minimaxir
It should be noted that it's _extremely_ easy to scrape geotag information or
any public hashtag feed via the Instagram API.

[http://instagram.com/developer/](http://instagram.com/developer/)

EDIT: Here's a very quick map of all the #tree tweets on Instagram in the past
hour or so: [http://i.imgur.com/D66r3Ui.png](http://i.imgur.com/D66r3Ui.png)

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todd3834
You could probably easily tell where anyone lives with the geotagging feature
just by looking at breakfast and dinner photos.

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neilk
This site pairs geotagged photos with Google Street View. It's heartwarmingly
creepy. By default, right now it's following #christmas, but here's the view
of #tree:

[http://sm.rutgers.edu/thebeat/?q=tree](http://sm.rutgers.edu/thebeat/?q=tree)

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paulwithap
So do people with numbers listed in the phonebook.

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r109
and for some reason instagram always has to grab my GPS location when I open
it. hmmm gtfo.

