-By Warner Todd Huston
Everyone loves to use their iPhone or other smart phones to snap photos of family and friends, to take pics of places you’ve visited, and to upload those photos to the internet via services such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. But did you know that there is hidden data in those photos that can tell crooks and sex criminals exactly where those photos were taken? Alarmingly, your safety and privacy is at risk every time you upload a photo to the Internet!
So, if you are taking photos of your children inside your home, for instance, and you upload those to the Internet, criminals can use this hidden data to find out where you live. In fact, they can map out your entire life via this hidden data if you are a constant user of social media.
This should frighten the heck out of you if you are a parent that has a habit of uploading photos of your children to the Internet. Or if you are a single young woman who does the same. Any sex criminal can track you down using this data.
So, what is this hidden data? It is GPS information encoded into the photos you take from your cell phone that tells exactly where that photo was taken. This data can be revealed with add ons and phone aps that uncover the hidden GPS info.
What criminals can do is look at all your photos, reveal the GPS info, then map that info out and find out where you’ve been, where you like to go most, and where you live–not to mention where your kids live, their schools, and their favorite places to go.
This is dangerous info, but you can put a stop to it because your smartphone has the option to turn off the GPS information in your camera aps. If you go into your setting and go to your “Privacy” settings you’ll see an ap called something like “location services.” Inside that setting will be all the aps you have that are GPS location capabilities. You can then go into your camera aps and turn off the GPS location settings there.
Parents, if you take photos of your kids and upload them to the Internet, you NEED to turn off these GPS settings on your smart phone. Do it NOW.
(This article previously posted at MrConservative.com)
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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