“I Know Where Your Cat Lives”. Therefore I know where you live. That’s the message. How does this person know where your cat lives? Answer: modern cameras and smartphone cameras include GPS technology (Global Positioning System) so that when you take a photo of your cat the camera records “metadata” (hidden information about the photograph which includes location, the shutter speed, F stop and whether you used flash or not etc.).
When you upload the photos to a photo-hosting site the metadata goes with it. Then Owen Mundy, an assistant professor of art at Florida State University, extracted the data and built a website around it! Most of the cat positions come from the United States, Russia, Britain and Brazil.
Here is the trick…you can strip metadata from a image using Yahoo Smush.it™ 😉 So, if you want to guard your privacy use Smush.it™ because you’ll never know who is watching you – it is the big brother world.
Mr Mundy’s site has I believe one million photo locations on it. He estimates 15m photos tagged with “cat” online. He is underestimating in my opinion. It is much more than that.
There will be metadata but most of it is unrelated to GPS location. If you go onto Google Maps with your Galaxy is it able to locate your position automatically? If yes, it has GPS. My gut feeling is that you don’t have GPS metadata. My iPhone has and my Sony camera. Big brother knows where I am…..
I am using a Galaxy tablet (about two years old) to take pics. How likely is metadata embedded in them?