Protect Your Privacy!
Did you know that your privacy may be at risk when taking pictures with your Smartphone? Did you know that doing a simple upload of a picture from your phone to the internet poses great risks to you or your families privacy?
How Is Your Privacy at Risk?
When you take a picture with your Smartphone, there is GPS Geo-tag data embedded within each image. Anyone can easily find out where the picture was taken via Google Maps! Did your cell phone provider tell you about this? I bet not!
How Does this Work?
When you take a picture from your Smartphone, data is embedded into the image. This data is called Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF). This data contains a number of different details (digital effect applies, whether the flash was used, the date and time the image was taken and GPS data)! This feature is enabled on most Smartphones by default!
How to Protect Yourself and Prevent This Data from Being Captured
It is actually very easy to prevent Geo-Tagging on images. All Smartphones have a way to disable GPS location data. Here are some instructions on disabling the feature for most phones:
Disabling GPS Geo-Tagging on Android:
- Open your camera application
- Click Menu then the settings icon
- Set Geo-tag photos to “off”
Disabling GPS Geo-Tagging on IPhones:
- Click Settings
- Click General
- Click “Location Services”
- Toggle the On/Off setting to “Off” next to Camera
Disabling GPS Geo-Tagging on a BlackBerry
- Open the camera application
- Click the Location icon and set it to “Disabled”
Disabling the GPS Geo-Tagging on a Palm
- Click the “Launcher” icon
- Click on the “Location Services” app
- Set “Geotag Photos” to “off”