Be Carefull with you cell phone

[TB Roye]

Got this on the IAP website this morning. A little scary for those of you with the latest and greatest hand held communication devices. I don't fully understand how this works but evidently it does.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/video?id=7621105

Tom

[dbhost]

Holy swiss cheese batman!

[TB Roye]

Big Brother is Watching. What is wrong with a map and compass. I have a prepaid cell with not bell and whistles and it works fine.

I am retired so my life is much simpler. Have caller Id, if I want to talk to you I pick up. If you don't ID yourself I don't answer. Only LOML needs to know where I am at any given time.

Tom

[Whaler]

I saw that at IAP as well and like you I can't figure out how it is done or what software is required.

[Hoakie]

Whaler, basically the gps in your phone can be used to attach metadata to the image file you take on your cellphone. This embeded information can contain a whole bunch of information besides GPS coordinates such as camera settings, etc.

here is more information. There are a lot of free tools to get at this data including picture editing tools such as Google's Picassa or even simple add-ons to web browsers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format

at least on my phone I have the option of turning geo-tagging off in the camera settings

[Cubsfan]

I guess I'm a little surprised that people didn't know this. At least on the iPhone, it explicitly asks you (I think 2 or 3 times) if the camera app can use your location.

Even in the photo app you can look at your picture on map view.

[leehljp]

You guys are just now catching up on old information. There are geo-tagging camera's out there that do this. Three years ago in Japan, some cell phones location was broadcast with the call to auto service centers. They were advertised as such as a safety feature and many people bought them as such.

As to the photos, originally there was a large request from early geo-tagging adopters in the photo community for tracking and linking. This information has become a common part of many photos, and moved into smart phone photos. Some people are aware of it and the information is there.

The problem has arisen that later users are unaware of this feature. I will admit that this feature should be installed in the OFF position and if a person wants to use it, it should be up to the user to turn it on.

BEWARE for those who buy a new model camera as many will also have this feature and it will probably come already enabled. I searched for a geo-tagging camera two years ago but there were only a few and they were too expensive at the time.

[Bitme]

Whaler, basically the gps in your phone can be used to attach metadata to the image file you take on your cellphone. This embeded information can contain a whole bunch of information besides GPS coordinates such as camera settings, etc.

here is more information. There are a lot of free tools to get at this data including picture editing tools such as Google's Picassa or even simple add-ons to web browsers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format

at least on my phone I have the option of turning geo-tagging off in the camera settings

There are also free tools to get rid of this metadata, like this metadata scrubber. And here are instructions for disabling geotagging altogether.

[MilDoc]

Hmmmm. Adam Savage. Oh well.

Yep, really old news. I bought a geotagging camera several years ago for an overseas trip Love it! Proves a point I've always believed: most people never read the entire manual.

In most equipment you can turn this feature off. Simpler solution: don't post photos with your home location on the internet!

[jackellis]

None of our cell phones have cameras. Our cameras are too old to have built-in GPS. I may be taking possession of a new iPad with a camera in the near future, and I'll be very careful about posting photos from it.