Keeping Your Stack A Secret

...just as I was getting ready to take bullion photos tonight.

thehulk: The standard degree, minute, second format (with 2 decimal places) is sufficient to get you accuracy to well within a house - within about 5 feet (though the smartphone is probably only accurate to 25 feet or so). The photos lead you directly to the member's house, even in urban areas. Very scary.

It's not a security "flaw" per se, as it has its uses (consider for example taking photos along a hike and then you easily know where each photo was taken), but it is definitely a security concern.

Technically, it's feasible for this site to strip all of such data out of any uploaded photos, and to also do it automatically for any uploaded photos in the future. That would be a very handy feature. Otherwise, you can remove it in Windows 7 at least (maybe earlier versions) - right click a photo, click Properties, click the Details tab, and click the link at the bottom that says to remove personal information.

allranger: Could this be the reason for all the botched SWAT team raids on the wrong houses lately? :D

@allranger - That could be fun. You could have your stack floating in the middle of Lake Superior, stashed at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, or hovering 1000 meters above Roswell, New Mexico. The choices are limitless.

Most of the EXIF data recorded by your typical DSLR or compact digital camera does not seem to include anything too worrying. It's the location data included in your smart phone photos that's really the main worry.

There are several utilities for both Mac and PC users that will scrub this data from your photos. I just tested a very simple PC program called "JPEG & PNG Stripper" that is super easy to use and will scrub iPhone photos that the built-in Windows 7 tools may have problems removing.

Mac users can typically use any image viewer program that has a file conversion option to save JPEG files as PNG, and then save back to JPEG. This will usually remove the GPS lat and long numbers, but strangely enough NOT the altitude.

Photoshop and Aperture users could probably batch remove EXIF data from all of their photos...but that subject is beyond this discussion.

Thanks coin1024,

This really is a security flaw for Apple iPhone or other mobile devices, I remember there was news regarding people privacy is no longer their privacy, especially the Apple iPhone.

If the information got into the wrong individuals, this can do a lot of damages.

Edit: This reminds me of Lo-Jack with the wrong intention.

A few days ago I asked about PM thieves getting caught and how they did it, Here is one for you. Seems like the guy broke all the rules! Kept all his PM & guns in one safe, let a stranger live in his house and have a run of the place, and did not check his PM's on a regular time frame.

http://www.timesnews.net/article/90...in-gold-bars

@oden - I would genuinely prefer that people behave better than this. However, as long as there are bad guys out there wanting to pull this crud, all I can say is thank goodness for stupidity.