SECURITY ALERT
I received an email that I want to pass along on the board since most of us have smart phones.
I received an email that I want to pass along on the board since most of us have smart phones.
How your pictures lead predators straight into your home
It cracked a cruel hoax targeting a Hollywood celeb.
It led enemy troops to soldiers overseas...
And the same online secret can send predators straight to your home.
It all starts with a simple snapshot, taken on your trusty smart phone!
"Can you smile?" said Arlene Garcia.
Make no mistake.
Garcia loves her kids, and she really loves when others 'like' them... or pictures of them.
"And this is all family," said Garcia, pointing to several comments on a photo.
"I post pictures of my kids for my extended family to see maybe four or five times a week," she said.
But for this mother of three, no amount of Facebook fanfare trumps staying safe.
"That somebody can gain this information and do something to us- it's very unnerving," she said.
And that's why this digital detail rocked her world.
"Wow," she said.
It's called 'geotagging', meaning when you take a picture on a device with a GPS, namely a smartphone, that picture stores the location where it was taken, all the way down to the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates.
The 'geotagging alarm' first sounded a few years back, when a group of US soldiers, stationed in Iraq, posted pictures to social media and lead the enemy right to them.
In all, four helicopters were destroyed.
And it was back in the headlines this month.
"She was eight years old and had neuroblastoma," said Kimberly Williams Paisley.
This after a deranged fan conned country star Brad Paisley and his wife into believing her daughter was dying of cancer.
The story turned out to be a heartbreaking hoax.
"I felt so violated," said Williams-Paisley.
"It's emotional terrorism," added her husband.
ABC's Nightline tracked down the culprit through pictures of the phony patient's journal.
"When you enter it in Google Maps, you get the actual address," explained the show's producer.
But you don't have to be a soldier, a singer, or even a social media loving mom for your posts to pose a risk.
"We've had situations where people have posted that they're going on vacation," said TPD Sergeant Chris Widmer.
Police say this is just another example of society's scary tendency to overshare.
"We are seeing cases of people posting personal information on facebook and becoming victimized," he said.
So, how do you protect yourself in this case?
Location services is on for your camera.
On an iPhone, simply head to the device's 'settings', click on 'privacy', and turn location services off.
For instructions on how to turn off the locator on other types of phones, click here.
http://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/1401/how-do-you-find-the-gps-coordinates-of-your-photos/
http://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/1401/how-do-you-find-the-gps-coordinates-of-your-photos/
To see if your photos have coordinates embedded in them, head to this website.
