What your digital photos reveal about you

I watch too many crime shows on TV, but one thing I know is the good guys can zero in on the bad guys by tracking their cell phones. It seems like every show uses cell phone tracking in one way or another. I have no idea if any of this is true.

PC World says some of it is: The geotagging data contained in many mobile phone images lets strangers know exactly where you are. Whoa, dude!

When you upload an image to Twitter a subset of the 75 million Twitter users will know your exact location. Digital photos automatically store a wealth of information--known as EXIF data--produced by the camera. Most of the data is harmless, but about 3 percent of all photos posted on Twitter contain location data, and that figure is growing. Anyone on the Web who can read the data knows where the photographer was standing.

Thank goodness I don't know how to do that! Here's what can happen:

Mayhemic Labs' Ben Jackson detailed how he found personal details about a man in a photo. Using accompanying geotagging data, Jackson located the man's house on Google Earth. Then he found a name associated with the house where the photo was taken, leading him to a Facebook account that yielded a birth date, marriage status, and friends. A second username listed on the Facebook page led to a second Twitter account, and so forth. The point here is that once you start pulling on the thread of information contained in a geotagged image, a single photo can reveal a whole trove of personal data--far more than you might think.

Book 'em, Dano!

PC World explains the science and how to disable the geotagging feature on smart phones here.