Hey guys, I would have posted this in the "security" section but seems I don't have those privileges. I'll post it here and if someone with privileges moves it that's fine. What follows should be of interest for anyone posting photo's of their grow locations. My daughter clued me in to this but it became apparent quickly the possible ramifications.
Here's the deal. For those that don't know, and I didn't, all modern digital camera's store information regarding the camera settings like exposure. Computer programs can access this information. It will even tell you if the photo has been edited with an external program. Fortunately this information can be stripped from the image files. Your now probably wondering what this has to do with growing? Sit down.
Camera phones that are GPS enabled upload one other bit of information, and that's the GPS coordinates of exactly where that photo was taken. She took one of her photo's and feed it into a program and it pulled the information from the image. This was an image upload to a website and then downloaded back to the PC.
From that data she clicked on the linked coordinates and it pulled it straight into Google maps. I was looking at the exact same image she took but only from the street view. I thought it would be fun to grab a photo from a grow here, one where someone mentions the crappy cellphone picture, pull the data and upload a picture of their house. Spooky shit.
This blew me away but really doesn't surprise me. Privacy is really an illusion, what the average Joe see's and knows is enough to give them a warm fuzzy about their security but it really is meaningless.
It might be a good idea for the site admin to examine the ability to remove this information from uploaded photo's. She said this information is stored in a file called the "EXIF" info. Maybe a photo buff here knows what this data is, I'm not even sure the EXIF is exactly the term.
I'm a little medicated on some C99 from Mos Negra so I might just be a little paranoid.. lol but I thought it was worth sharing.
Peace!
Here's the deal. For those that don't know, and I didn't, all modern digital camera's store information regarding the camera settings like exposure. Computer programs can access this information. It will even tell you if the photo has been edited with an external program. Fortunately this information can be stripped from the image files. Your now probably wondering what this has to do with growing? Sit down.
Camera phones that are GPS enabled upload one other bit of information, and that's the GPS coordinates of exactly where that photo was taken. She took one of her photo's and feed it into a program and it pulled the information from the image. This was an image upload to a website and then downloaded back to the PC.
From that data she clicked on the linked coordinates and it pulled it straight into Google maps. I was looking at the exact same image she took but only from the street view. I thought it would be fun to grab a photo from a grow here, one where someone mentions the crappy cellphone picture, pull the data and upload a picture of their house. Spooky shit.
This blew me away but really doesn't surprise me. Privacy is really an illusion, what the average Joe see's and knows is enough to give them a warm fuzzy about their security but it really is meaningless.
It might be a good idea for the site admin to examine the ability to remove this information from uploaded photo's. She said this information is stored in a file called the "EXIF" info. Maybe a photo buff here knows what this data is, I'm not even sure the EXIF is exactly the term.
I'm a little medicated on some C99 from Mos Negra so I might just be a little paranoid.. lol but I thought it was worth sharing.
Peace!
