Leaving the house this weekend? Telling all your Facebook buds about it? You might want to reconsider that. Police in Nashua, New Hampshire broke up a robbery ring this week that was using Facebook to plan their heists. The gang was monitoring Facebook pages to determine when a target would be out of their home and then robbed it. (more)
The moment is special: Your kid just learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. So you fire up your iPhone's camera, snap a photograph, upload the image to TwitPic, and share the evidence of your child's triumph via Twitter. When you post the picture, a subset of the 75 million Twitter users will know the exact location of you and your child. Digital photos automatically store a wealth of information--known as EXIF data--produced by the camera. Most of the data is harmless...
 |
| Cat burglar is also an identity thief. |
however...
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. (more)
