Where is my iPhone? Click the image to find it.From http://abteen.org/post/248002517

Where is my iPhone? Click the image to find it.

From http://abteen.org/post/248002517

Where is my iPhone? Click the image to find it.From http://abteen.org/post/248002517

Where is my iPhone? Click the image to find it.

From http://abteen.org/post/248002517

Posted 2 years ago 12 notes

Notes:

  1. whereismyiphone posted this

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Where is my iPhone?

The Apple iPhone (and certain other phones), have cameras and GPS connectivity. Manufacturers are starting to enable "geotagging" support, so that pictures contain the latitude/longitude coordinates of where the picture was taken.

Unfortunately, modern software doesn't take this into account and neglects to remove this information from the picture, so a user's picture that is innocently uploaded, contains location-identifying information (in the EXIF information).

With the prevalence of photos on the web (Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr, Twitter, Blogger, etc.), and on the increasing prevalence of mobile applications on phones that allow you to quickly upload pictures on a near real-time basis, you have a recipe where personally identifying information (PII) will continue to be spread unknowingly and be surprisingly accurate.

This blog is a proof-of-concept displaying information leakage -- the result of a shell script which periodically searches the Tumblr "Popular" live feed for pictures that are geotagged with latitude/longitude coordinates, and reblogs those random pictures with the coordinates translated and linked to via Google Maps.

The purpose of this blog is user awareness. If you have found a picture from your blog listed here, and have objections to it being listed here, please contact me and I will ensure it is removed and your blog link blocked from further processing.

How can you protect yourself in the future? Make sure that the camera of your mobile device does not tag images. For more information about Apple's location services, please read: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1975. For other phones, contact your service provider and/or phone manufacturer to find out how to disable GPS tagging of your pictures.

Of course, the ultimate protection is being aware of what you are publishing on the internet. However, the products you use online only exist because you use their services. The same goes for the gadgets that publish this information. Make your voice heard. If you no longer want Tumblr publishing pictures with this data in them, write them to request they ensure this type of data is stripped out. Visit http://www.tumblr.com/help to find out how to make this request (e-mail Mark).

And going further, I bet you're pretty ticked that the $400 cell phone in your pocket is responsible for all this and you didn't even know what it was doing!

Take the time to contact mobile device manufacturers such as Apple and request that the GPS tagging of pictures be an "opt-in" feature as opposed to an on-by-default, opt-out feature. Further, request that the camera's GPS access be separated from the rest of the device.

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