Posted on 05/10/2011 6:47:26 AM PDT by BenLurkin
If you’re like many folks, posting pics of your kids on line is no biggie. It might seem harmless, especially if you don’t print any information along with the photo on various social media, right?
Wrong. Big time.
If you’re using a SmartPhone camera, you could actually be revealing to strangers…your child’s exact location.
It’s called Geo Tagging, a feature that prints the address of where a photo was taken.
As Sandra Mitchell reported for the CBS2 News at 11 p.m. Monday, it’s a little known feature of various SmartPhone. When you take pictures, the camera automatically embeds the worldwide longitude and latitude coordinates of where the photo was taken.
Once you e mail or post that photo, the exact address where it was taken shows up.
Mitchell talked to several parents who had no idea this information was out there for all the world to see.
Said one mom, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, in this day and age, that anything you put on the Internet could be tracked.”
For the record, Facebook and Craigslist don’t allow this tracker device to publish info…but many other social networking sites do, TwitPic for one. Flickr to name another.
Mitchell demonstrated how easy it is to turn off the feature.
Something heiress Paris Hilton might want to consider. When she tweeted about an intruder at her home last summer, she inadvertently gave the entire twitter universe her home address.
Pictures you’ve posted that already had the Geo-tagging feature…well, you’re stuck. The address will be in cyberspace for all time.
(Excerpt) Read more at losangeles.cbslocal.com ...
It would be nice if the writer of the article shared that info!
As if worry-wart mothers don’t already have enough to obsess over when it comes to someone “snatching” their kid.
99% of the “missing children” have been taken by estranged spouses. Of the remaining 1%, your child has a better chance of being run over while riding his/her bicycle than being snatched by a stranger.
I see moms all the time dropping their kids off at school in the morning, and staying at the curb (blocking traffic) until their precious little one actually walks into the door, as if some stranger is going to pop out of the bushes just before they get into the building.
Lighen up, Francis.
>>I see moms all the time dropping their kids off at school in the morning, and staying at the curb (blocking traffic) until their precious little one actually walks into the door, as if some stranger is going to pop out of the bushes just before they get into the building.<<
LOL!!!
I’m a school crossing guard. Trust me, I appreciate the parents that watch their kids. It keeps fights, tiffs, and injuries down. With that, perhaps you don’t see how people drive, how impatient parents who can’t wait a minute or two while the parent in front is watching their 1st grader get to the door, FLY around the car without looking. Today I watched a parent stop far back so as not to block anyone. His son tried to make it across the drive and nearly got mowed down by an impatient parent coming the other way.
Along with that, yes, we did have a stranger attempt to pull one of our safety girls into a van. We are near the entrance to a highway and have two “day labor” offices right by our school.
This is not the 70’s.
If you have an HTC Desire HD, just go to your camera, get to camera settings, and toggle GeoTag to off.
In flickr it’s simply a setting (turn off your exif data), but I don’t know about with the phone or camera. My camera doesn’t geotag, I have to do that myself, so I only tag photos I want tagged (say if I take a picture at a nature center and I want people to know where it was taken) but I never tag photos that were taken at my house or families homes, etc. And I never upload photos while we are out of town, if it would tip off anyone that we are not home. Some people are really stupid and share TMI.
It’s not just kids getting snatched. It’s people putting info about where they live and then mentioning they are going on vacation etc. Besides, if your child is one of those 1%, it’s 100% to you.
You sound so bitter....childless? Barren? My children mean the world to be....they are in college and I still make them call me when they arrive at their destination
Most photo editors can remove this information from the photo.
I use Irfanview, it’s free and open-source. You need the JPEG Lossless Operations plugin.
In Irfanview, select JPEG Lossless Operations from the Options menu. Check ‘Clean All APP markers’ and hit ‘Start’. Your picture now contains no metadata at all, and is completely safe to post.
Because you disagree with him. Please!
I have five happy, health kids. I never hovered over them. They think for themselves and take charge of groups and situations...because I always gave them the latitude to *live*.
Not childless yet, but we're working on it! Our oldest graduates from High School this year, and is going to College in the fall. He was awarded a Congressional Medal of Merit yesterday by Rep. Mike Rogers.
Our youngest will be in High School next fall, and he too is extremely smart. (Obviously they inherited all of their smarts and good looks from their mother.)
No, not bitter, practical. The behavior I outlined was not with kindergarden aged kids, it happens daily at the Jr. High where I drop off my youngest. By age 14, I think you should be able to trust your child to walk the 30 feed from the curb to the school door. If not, then what is to stop them from walking right out the door on the other side of the school?
I'm sure your children do mean the world to you, and there is nothing wrong with having them check in with you when they take long trips.
But I'm not going to worry that someone is going to kidnap my 4 year old because I posted a geotagged photo on Facebook. Just driving around the neighborhood looking at the toys strewn in the front yards will tell anyone where the young kids are.
You sound mean...why the childless, barren stuff? Why not just your last sentence?
She reminds me of those Mom’s that take a do over and not have children. OR...thinks any woman that has NO children is less than a woman. I am guessing a little of both. Pity her kids.
It's hard to strike a balance between teaching independence and self-reliance, and providing the proper level of supervision and personal safety.
Unfortunately some parents err on the side of caution and don't even attempt to practice the former.
>>Unfortunately some parents err on the side of caution and don’t even attempt to practice the former. <<
Yeah, just ask the pros that watch the kids every day. I’m one of them.
You call them helicopter parents, I call them parents who care.
I call the parent’s that don’t care names I can’t say here.
I'm married to a pro that teaches 4th grade. Out of 28 students in her class, there are two nuclear families. The rest are single parents, raised by grandparents, or are unmarried cohabitation parents.
We need more parents who are involved in their children's education, but we don't need moms worrying that some boogyman is going to snatch their baby because they posted a geotagged birthday picture on Facebook.
Good chance she never steps into the parking lot. That is where I am. And your complaint was about parents who watch their kids go into the school. I say, Lord Love them. They make my life AND your wife’s life easier.
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