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Digital Security: Metadata in Photos

Yup, the world’s a mess, but today I’m here as your friendly neighborhood digital security expert to give you some tips, especially now.

Photos! We take so many of them. And maybe by now you know not to share things like addresses in the background or really descriptive clues as to where exactly you might be. Things like credit card, bank, ID, flight information in those photos. Great!

Outside of the content, digital photos contain meta data, which can include anything from the time the photo was taken, the location, what device it was taken on, and a ton of more other information.

And then we post, share, email, store that data, and the person on the other end now has the metadata too.

So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to turn off the default geotagging on your device’s camera. Here’s a couple of ways to do it on different devices, and I’ll put that in the comments as well.

iOS: Settings > Privacy > Location Settings > Camera > Never
Android: Camera > Settings > Location > Off

We can’t help but have so much data because we do live in a digital world. But we can be are careful as we can with the privacy that we do have.

More tips to come.

Published inDigital Security

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