The explosion of social media on the internet has revealed a lot about ourselves. But to some people's surprise, even the photos you post on the web can reveal more than you may have intended.
With a few clicks of a mouse someone can find out 'exactly' where those pictures were taken, with its latitude and longitude under the photos properties. local smart phone user Ashley Lee told me, "no, I never knew that before."
And she wasn't alone. Fellow smart phone user Natasha Jenkins added, "I have not." And neither did local resident Linda Lee who said, "I don't like that. I don't like it at all."
A geo-tag on your photos can pose all sorts of questions. Lee worried aloud, "somebody could be tracking me, maybe, I guess. That's scary."
Nationally, it's even become a concern with victims of domestic violence, trying to hide from their abusers. even Adam Savage, the co-host of the science program "Mythbusters" on cable television recently had his vehicle stolen after showing a photo of it on twitter.
Savage wrote that his car was for sale before signing off announcing he was leaving for work. It was not there when he returned home.
After a brief discussion, Natasha Jenkins told me, "I think I'm going to have to take that off." And, at least some of the people I met expressed a bit of frustration that they were never fully warned about geo-tagging of photos: "I mean what you're getting into when you take a picture. They need to tell you that this should, you know, that it tells where the picture was taken," concluded Linda Lee.
Even video is geo-tagged unless you turn off that feature. That can be done by just going to your phone settings and clicking on the GPS or Location category, depending on the phone, and clicking it off.
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