This is quite an alarming situation. Ever take a picture of your child and ping it straight to facebook or your blog or your twitter? Just by doing that, a would-be predator can work out where your child lives, which of your home's bedroom is the child's, where exactly your child hangs out, pinpointed to his favourite swing in the park. The pred knows where your child goes to school, what time he starts and finishes, how he gets home and with whom. Amazing huh? And all from the tracking device disguised as a GPS built into every smart phone. This video is taken from some guy's blog - ignore his words and just watch the short film. http://kyeos.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/warning-if-you-take-photos-with-your-cell-phone/
That's kinda crazy... Smartphones can be wonderful, but they're also really dangerous if people don't know how to use them right and take precautions. It's also strange that this video is 2 years old and you and like three of my friends on facebook all posted this the same day.
Facebook (the only thing I use, don't know about all other social networks) has privacy settings that can be customized for individual posts and there's also that simple solution they talked about in the video that can be applied to the phones themselves. Hackers will always have more or less easily doable ways of getting whatever information they want, anyway. So, this might be worrisome, but not surprising to me. I would be much more shocked if those people in the video actually posted their own and their kids' photos in a completely public manner and not just for their social network friends...
Also, you can disable the location-ping on your photos, so you don't have to worry about this particular issue.
the get-out or safety clauses may be there Liz but the default settings on smart phones are anything but safe - the bigger issue is there are no warnings from Apple or Samsung and not many people have the remotest idea.
A lot of apps having unnecessary permissions as well (including location tracking), and it seems like most people don't look at these permissions before downloading an app.
You are right, erebh. People should be made aware of this. It's always a good idea to also make sure anything where you post stuff about your kids is highly private. For example, some people like to keep author facebook pages, and wonder about simply having one facebook page for fans and for friends. I like to post a lot of photos of my kids, etc., so I keep my FB settings pretty private, and I only friend people whom I actually know. If I get to the point where I want a FB page to interact with readers, I would keep two separate pages, and wouldn't post pics or anything too specific about my kids on the author page. But I do like the ability to share photos of them with friends and relatives that I don't see very often.
My son set his smart phone to take an image of anyone who uses it (if it's lost or stolen) and it sends the image and location to his email without the user knowing the image was taken. There's a lot of good advice about image geotagging in this article: I think people should be cautious but really, what's the chance pedophiles are searching for kids nearby via geotagging when it's much easier to find potential victims at parks, shopping malls, school bus stops and so on. If someone has an abuser they are hiding from, that's a different matter. Technology is mind boggling. I'm having to make occasional edits in my fictional future world to keep up.
I actually try and keep my sci-fi "tech-lite" for that reason. My personal view of the far future is one where tech becomes invisible to our daily lives. But to the subject... [HR][/HR] There was nothing newsworthy to me in that report. I knew all those things. All my F/B friends are passing that same article around with titles like "OMG!" and "You won't believe it!" and "Mother of Christ cooking pork-chops with cheese in the same pan on Saturday afternoon, watch this!!" If anything, this shock to the zeitgeist is a huge red-flag that people don't read. They don't read the warnings, the agreements, the words above the bit that says "Accept / Don't Accept." It's also, to me, part of the greater no accountability movement. "You hit accept? "Of course I did?" "Did you read the disclaimer?" "Of course not. Who has time for that shit?" *shrug*
I've taken pics on my Samsung galaxy and uploaded straight to facebook - I don't remember ever having to click disclaimers - even when buying the phone. Why is this feature hidden? Wat are they up to? Q Twilight Zone theme....
When I first set up my current iPhone (and eveyr previous iPhone I've owned), there is a portion of the set up where you chose Location Services. Most people actually becomes aware of Location Services on their phone for a completely different reason: battery life. Having that on kills your battery pretty quick. Also, on iPhone (can't speak for the competitors) when you upload a pic or vid, it asks if you wish to add a location or not.
I don't know which galaxy you have, but on my s3 if you go into camera options you can find "gps tag" which is on default off.
