Problem
What does your photo reveal?
How Data Can Help You - Locate You In Emergency
I have looked at lots of photos on Wikipedia which show the type of camera and place. They get the place from a GPS reading built into the caera of smart phone. That's really handy. If you are floating out to sea and need help, lost in a snowstorm, trapped by an abductor, in a car which rolled off a road into a gully, your photo will tell anybody you send it to where you are.
Revealing Loaction Of Valuables
What about your own photos? Supposing a film star or a friend is showing their diamond engagemnt ring? You take a photo.
They change their mind and say, "I don't want my photo taken."
You agree not to put it on Facebook. Then you decide to just show the lovely ring but not the face which would reveal who it belongs to. The photo data might reveal the jewellery shop, the hotel, or the country.
Marketing Fusion and Ages
Marketing organisations use fusion. They piece together a mosaic of their customers. They know that elderly people buy walking sticks, that mothers buy nappies, that large families buy giant packs of rice. No surprises there. Older people read the Help The Aged magazines, whilst young mother are likely to read Mother and Baby or Parents. The readers of car magazines and bikers' magazines form another subgroup. Some categories overlap. Others are separate.
It doesn't happen every time. You could be buying goods or magazines for somebody else. But it happens more often than not.
Government Data
The UK government has already sold off your address to marketing companies. I once filled in a libarary car application. My name was mis-spelled, on their computer. My library card was printed with a C instead of an L. Years later I started getting information from companies spelling my name with a C.
Marketing Areas and Journals
The marketing poeple also know that the seafront in one remote resort has small bungalows; another area has opulent Hollywood mansions. They know that Irish people read Irish newspapers; Indians read newspapers in their language. Technical journals are read by people with Phds. By asking you two questions about yourself, they can guess another fact, or track it down from another survey.
Seasonal Buying
Sellers, insurers and burglars know that people buy gifts at Christmas time. The same applies to other national holidays. The same goes for weddings. Birthdays also attract advertisers. I am very a happy to be emailed by Café Rouge offering me free Champagne or sparkling white wine if I book a table for four or more, better still if the offer has no minimum persons requirement. Otherwise, if one person is ill with flu, we cancel the dinner, postpone it, find the voucher has expired and never go.
Hotel Customers
It is the same sort of piecing together information as is done by the shopkeeper who ask sa tourist, 'which hotel are you staying in?' If you are staying in the five star hotel, he gets out his more expensive goods. If you are staying in a youth hostel, he find you something in your budget.
GPS
When my photos are stored on my computer, it's quite handy to have the rough location. Sometimes the location is wrong, off by a few miles. The GPS is at fault.
We were looking for a cemetery for a funeral in the car. The gps was wrong. We were in the adjacent road, separated from the cemetery by a road of houses. The entrance was around the corner and down a side road.
Delay
However, I am getting increasingly wary about which photos I show. I often put up photos a week later, after I have changed location. I no longer feel guilty that my pictures are no longer news, that I have not shown a photo taken right this second. I am not into 'news'. I am into features.
Wikipedia warns:
Author
What does your photo reveal?
How Data Can Help You - Locate You In Emergency
I have looked at lots of photos on Wikipedia which show the type of camera and place. They get the place from a GPS reading built into the caera of smart phone. That's really handy. If you are floating out to sea and need help, lost in a snowstorm, trapped by an abductor, in a car which rolled off a road into a gully, your photo will tell anybody you send it to where you are.
Revealing Loaction Of Valuables
What about your own photos? Supposing a film star or a friend is showing their diamond engagemnt ring? You take a photo.
They change their mind and say, "I don't want my photo taken."
You agree not to put it on Facebook. Then you decide to just show the lovely ring but not the face which would reveal who it belongs to. The photo data might reveal the jewellery shop, the hotel, or the country.
Marketing Fusion and Ages
Marketing organisations use fusion. They piece together a mosaic of their customers. They know that elderly people buy walking sticks, that mothers buy nappies, that large families buy giant packs of rice. No surprises there. Older people read the Help The Aged magazines, whilst young mother are likely to read Mother and Baby or Parents. The readers of car magazines and bikers' magazines form another subgroup. Some categories overlap. Others are separate.
It doesn't happen every time. You could be buying goods or magazines for somebody else. But it happens more often than not.
Government Data
The UK government has already sold off your address to marketing companies. I once filled in a libarary car application. My name was mis-spelled, on their computer. My library card was printed with a C instead of an L. Years later I started getting information from companies spelling my name with a C.
Marketing Areas and Journals
The marketing poeple also know that the seafront in one remote resort has small bungalows; another area has opulent Hollywood mansions. They know that Irish people read Irish newspapers; Indians read newspapers in their language. Technical journals are read by people with Phds. By asking you two questions about yourself, they can guess another fact, or track it down from another survey.
Seasonal Buying
Sellers, insurers and burglars know that people buy gifts at Christmas time. The same applies to other national holidays. The same goes for weddings. Birthdays also attract advertisers. I am very a happy to be emailed by Café Rouge offering me free Champagne or sparkling white wine if I book a table for four or more, better still if the offer has no minimum persons requirement. Otherwise, if one person is ill with flu, we cancel the dinner, postpone it, find the voucher has expired and never go.
Hotel Customers
It is the same sort of piecing together information as is done by the shopkeeper who ask sa tourist, 'which hotel are you staying in?' If you are staying in the five star hotel, he gets out his more expensive goods. If you are staying in a youth hostel, he find you something in your budget.
GPS
When my photos are stored on my computer, it's quite handy to have the rough location. Sometimes the location is wrong, off by a few miles. The GPS is at fault.
We were looking for a cemetery for a funeral in the car. The gps was wrong. We were in the adjacent road, separated from the cemetery by a road of houses. The entrance was around the corner and down a side road.
Delay
However, I am getting increasingly wary about which photos I show. I often put up photos a week later, after I have changed location. I no longer feel guilty that my pictures are no longer news, that I have not shown a photo taken right this second. I am not into 'news'. I am into features.
Wikipedia warns:
A photo taken with a GPS-enabled camera can reveal the exact location and time it was taken, and the unique ID number of the device - this is all done by default - often without the user's knowledge. Many users may be unaware that their photos are tagged by default in this manner, or that specialist software may be required to remove the Exif tag before publishing.
For example, a whistleblower, journalist or political dissident relying on the protection of anonymity to allow them to report malfeasance by a corporate entity, criminal, or government may therefore find their safety compromised by this default data collection.
In December 2012, anti-virus programmer John McAfee was arrested in Guatemala while fleeing from alleged persecution[15] in Belize, which shares a border. Vice magazine had published an exclusive interview on their website with McAfee "on the run"[16] that included a photo of McAfee with a Vice reporter taken with a phone that had geotagged the image.[17] The photo's metadata included GPS coordinates locating McAfee in Guatemala, and he was captured two days later.[18]
According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA is targeting Exif information under the XKeyscoreprogram.[19]
The privacy problem of Exif data can be avoided by removing the Exif data using a metadata removal tool.[20]
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
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