Photos metadata, camera’s “fingerprint” can help identify and track you.

[OscarCP]

Photos taken with cellphones and digital cameras include metadata on where and when they were taken. And imperfections unique to a given camera’s array of light sensors that act as a retina where images are formed and converted into streams of binary numbers that get put together as images, those irregularities are the “fingerprints” of the camera that, when used often by the same person to take pictures and along with the metadata, can help identify the photographer and get a record of where he or she was when the photos were taken.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210324-the-hidden-fingerprint-inside-your-photos

Excerpts:

“It is not impossible to expunge metadata, using freely available tools such as ExifTool. But many people don’t even realise the data is there, let alone how it might be used, so they don’t bother to do anything about it before they post images online. Some social media platforms remove information like geolocation (though only from public view), but many other websites do not.”

“This lack of awareness has proven useful for police investigators, to help them place unwitting criminals at a scene. But it also poses a privacy problem for law-abiding citizens if the authorities can track their activities through images on their camera and social media. And unfortunately, savvy criminals can use the same tricks as the police: if they can discover where and when a photo was taken, it can leave you vulnerable to crimes such as burglary or stalking.“

Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS Mojave + Linux (Mint)

Reply | Quote

[Alex5723]

My iPhone’s camera doesn’t have access to location.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to access attached files.

Reply | Quote

[OscarCP]

Alex: “My iPhone’s camera doesn’t have access to location.”

 It could have, but you have disabled it. Because you know about it and how to do it. The point of the article being that many don’t. For example, I don’t post pictures with metadata on Facebook, because I am not “in” Facebook …

That’s the way!

Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS Mojave + Linux (Mint)

Reply | Quote

[Kirsty]

OscarCP wrote:

digital cameras include metadata on where … they were taken

Not all digital cameras have these facilities… mine doesn’t. Just like you can get dumb phones, you can also get dumb digital cameras.

1 user thanked author for this post.

OscarCP

Reply | Quote

[OscarCP]

Kirsty: A dumb camera will still have a “fingerprint”, as explained in my original comment and in the article I linked there, but I don’t know if that alone can be used by someone else to do some mischief. Perhaps not. Then again ..

Windows 7 Professional, SP1, x64 Group W (ex B) & macOS Mojave + Linux (Mint)

1 user thanked author for this post.

Kirsty

Reply | Quote

[Author]

Posts