This might be old news to some, in fact I have known about it for a few years now, but the recent series I wrote on left over drive data got me to thinking about it again. The short version is, your phone is telling … where your pictures were taken from… Ok, ok, so it is not as big a deal as that sounds, but it could be a privacy concern if you happen to be taking pictures somewhere you should not be.
So let me explain … When you take a picture on a digital camera, the camera bakes in some information, metadata, or more technically the EXIF tag. It is not much information, mostly the data on the camera, shutter speed, that sort of information.
Clearly this information is viewable in Windows without any sort of special tools too, making it really convenient to know what camera was used, how big the picture is, and that sort of detail. Sounds good so far, but mobile phone cameras can take it a step farther and add your GPS location information …
Like this picture here, only has the altitude attached (I disabled the location data on this phone) … but this picture …
This picture had GPS coordinates attached, and by plugging in those coordinates into Google Maps, someone would be able to pinpoint on a map exactly where the picture was taken. All this done with just Windows, no need of any special software.
While Facebook and Twitter both appear to strip the information off the pictures, if you are the paranoid sort, you may choose to consult the manual for your phone and turn off any geolocation options. Or maybe think twice about uploading that photo, seeing as there might be other data attached to the photo …