What the Internet Can See From Your Rabbit Pictures

[higi]

Check out this article that was published in the New York Times website recently - What the Internet Can See From Your Cat Pictures. (this is relevant to Rabbits pictures as well ) It warns about the dangers of geotags (location data) in pictures you take.

In a nutshell, if you take pictures of your rabbit with a smartphone that has geotagging enabled and post them on the web, strangers can learn where you live by looking at the location data embedded in the pictures. You can disable geotagging or use a geotag remover to get rid of the location data, before you post the pictures on the web.

 

[Katiedarling]

Yikes! I am so guilty of not checking to make sure it is turned off! :headsmack It's such a creepy thing to think about.

 

[Nancy McClelland]

We welcome all strangers to our home--our small dog weighs in a 125. Any pics I post are taken with a separate, digital camera. Been paranoid about phones for a long time.

 

[MikeScone]

It is amazing how much information we're putting out in public, accidentally or intentionally. Do we really need to share so much? I think half the posts some people put on Facebook just beg the question, "why did you think anyone would care about that?"

The GPS encoding of photographs can be problematic quite aside from cat or rabbit pictures (in the end, who cares where rabbits live?). When my son was deployed to Afghanistan he was specifically told not to use a GPS-encoded camera or cell phone camera for any pictures which would be posted anywhere, for the obvious security reasons - during WWII the censors used to black out the names of places people put in letters home so as not to give the enemy any idea of troop movements. Imagine what they'd have thought about today's world where a soldier who is still in the field could instantaneously post a picture to the world in general which tells everyone where he is within a few meters.

 

[Blue eyes]

Good reminder! Thank you.

 

[Nancy McClelland]

A few examples--all the nice people at Fox News in England on trial for illegal phone interceptions. Ask Jennifer Lawrence is she's going to put any more nude photos on her phone? In fact, "Clear and present danger" showed how easy the government can listen in and track phones and that was more than a decade ago--and there is so many more things they can do if they want so civilians can too. The only real privacy left in this world is off grid.

 

[higi]

It is amazing how much information we're putting out in public, accidentally or intentionally. Do we really need to share so much? I think half the posts some people put on Facebook just beg the question, "why did you think anyone would care about that?"

The GPS encoding of photographs can be problematic quite aside from cat or rabbit pictures (in the end, who cares where rabbits live?). When my son was deployed to Afghanistan he was specifically told not to use a GPS-encoded camera or cell phone camera for any pictures which would be posted anywhere, for the obvious security reasons - during WWII the censors used to black out the names of places people put in letters home so as not to give the enemy any idea of troop movements. Imagine what they'd have thought about today's world where a soldier who is still in the field could instantaneously post a picture to the world in general which tells everyone where he is within a few meters.

Of course it's not the disclosure of where the rabbit lives that's problematic, but where his OWNER lives. it can compromise one anonymity on the internet, and in some circumstances, possibly if other info is available on the person, can cause him damage.

The warning the military gives to soldiers regarding geotagging is not without a good reason:

Warren cited a real-world example from 2007. When a new fleet of helicopters arrived with an aviation unit at a base in Iraq, some Soldiers took pictures on the flightline, he said. From the photos that were uploaded to the Internet, the enemy was able to determine the exact location of the helicopters inside the compound and conduct a mortar attack, destroying four of the AH-64 Apaches.

Source: http://www.army.mil/article/75165/Geotagging_poses_security_risks/