Blogme

Following a scientific study and several demonstrative websites, a discussion on the privacy implications of geotagging has raised public attention. In particular, the automatic embedding of geotags in pictures taken with smartphones is often ignored by cell-phone users. As a result, people are often not aware that the photos they publish on the Internet have been geotagged. Many celebrities reportedly gave away their home location without knowing it. According to the study, a significant number of for-sale advertisements on Craigslist, that were otherwise anonymized, contained geotags, thereby revealing the location of high-valued goods—sometimes in combination with clear hints to the absence of the offerer at certain times. Publishing photos and other media tagged with exact geolocation on the Internet allows random people to track an individual's location and correlate it with other information. Therefore, criminals could find out when homes are empty because their inhabitants p...

With photos stored in JPEG, TIFF and many other file formats, the geotag information, storing camera location and sometimes heading, is typically embedded in the metadata, stored in Exchangeable image file format (Exif) or Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) format. These data are not visible in the picture itself but are read and written by special programs and most digital cameras and modern scanners. Latitude and longitude are stored in units of degrees with decimals. This geotag information can be read by many programs, such as the cross-platform open source ExifTool. An example readout for a photo might look like: or the same coordinates could also be presented as decimal degrees: When stored in Exif, the coordinates are represented as a series of rational numbers in the GPS sub-IFD. Here is a hexadecimal dump of the relevant section of the Exif metadata (with big-endian byte order): In the field of remote sensing the geotagging goal is to store coordinates of every pixel in the...

The geographical location data used in geotagging can, in almost every case, be derived from the global positioning system, and based on a latitude/longitude-coordinate system that presents each location on the earth from 180° west through 180° east along the Equator and 90° north through 90° south along the prime meridian. citation needed Two main options can be used to geotag photos: capturing GPS information at the time the photo is taken or "attaching" geocoordinates to the photograph after the picture is taken. In order to capture GPS data at the time the photograph is captured, the user must have a camera with built in GPS or a standalone GPS along with a digital camera. Because of the requirement for wireless service providers in United States to supply more precise location information for 911 calls by September 11, 2012, more and more cell phones have built-in GPS chips. Most smart phones already use a GPS chip along with built-in cameras to allow users to automati...

Geotagging is a popular feature on several social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. Facebook users can geotag photos that can be added to the page of the location they are tagging. Users may also use a feature that allows them to find nearby Facebook friends by generating a list of people according to the location tracker in their mobile devices. Instagram uses a map feature that allows users to geotag photos. The map layout pin points specific photos that the user has taken on a world map. The geographical location data used in geotagging can, in almost every case, be derived from the global positioning system, and based on a latitude/longitude-coordinate system that presents each location on the earth from 180° west through 180° east along the Equator and 90° north through 90° south along the prime meridian. citation needed Two main options can be used to geotag photos: capturing GPS information at the time the photo is taken or "attaching" geocoordinates t...

Geotagging is a popular feature on several social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. Facebook users can geotag photos that can be added to the page of the location they are tagging. Users may also use a feature that allows them to find nearby Facebook friends by generating a list of people according to the location tracker in their mobile devices. Instagram uses a map feature that allows users to geotag photos. The map layout pin points specific photos that the user has taken on a world map. The geographical location data used in geotagging can, in almost every case, be derived from the global positioning system, and based on a latitude/longitude-coordinate system that presents each location on the earth from 180° west through 180° east along the Equator and 90° north through 90° south along the prime meridian. citation needed Two main options can be used to geotag photos: capturing GPS information at the time the photo is taken or "attaching" geocoordinates t...