'Geotagging' Tips for Photos Posted on Social Media Sites
Internet services like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare can help you inform family and friends of every little detail of your life. But they can also be giving away that same information to hackers and criminals who could be waiting to take advantage.
KYW tech reporter Bob Bicknell has details on what you may be doing to tip them off, and how to stop it.
One of the coolest features in high-tech smartphones and digital cameras is geotagging. This is where geographics locations – in the form of latitude and longitude – are embedded inside digital picture files. It's a nice feature in programs like Apple's iPhoto, which can show you on a map where your pictures were taken. But many times, that information stays with the picture when you post it online – letting the world know where you and your family live.
You can still post photos without such information, but you'll need to do so from your phone or camera. Just look to the photo program's settings and make sure you turn off or disallow your current location to be embedded. Again, it's fine to include the information if you want, but if you didn't know you were doing it, that's different.
