Your Photos Contain a Lot More than Your Captures

We all take photos from our Mobile Phones and Digital Cameras and with the applications available at our dispose, We can upload them to every possible Social Network, Photo sharing sites at a click. These uploads can contain a lot more information about you than what you intended or expected to reveal.

Recent Happenings:

A Hacker who published the personal details of hundreds of police officers online was recently caught and unmasked, All this happened just because of a picture he uploaded on the internet.

The hacker had taken a Photo of his girlfriend from his iPhone and uploaded it directly to Twitter without realizing that the Photo he uploaded had GPS Co-ordinates attached with the photos which pointed directly to his house.

Most of the modern Smartphones have options that allow you to attach extra information to the Images that are captured. These data are known as Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF).

Take a look at the CameraZOOM FX Android App having an option to save GPS Coordinates.

EXIF data can contain a wide variety of information about the Photo embedded within the image. These information can range from just the Date when the photo was taken.. to the GPS Coordinates of the place where the photo was taken (as you already saw in the above case).

Worst of all, Many social networks still don’t strip out these unnecessary data, as you have seen the case with Twitter. P.S I haven’t personally tested this thing with Twitter but Facebook seems to be a good boy and strips out nearly (extremely in case of Cover Images! Sigh) all the unwanted data to save their server space. Yeah, Having these EXIF Data attached can weigh up your image sizes.

How to View the Embedded EXIF Data.

1. There are tools like EXIF Viewer for Firefox and EXIF Viewer for chrome available as Addons and Extensions.

2. Online tools like ExifViewer are available for uploading your Pics and viewing the embedded data.

3. Native Windows Properties Tab, Right click the Photo > Properties > Details Tab. There you have all the embedded information.

How to Remove EXIF Data from Photos.

EXIF Data can be removed from these photos using the following methods:

Method #1

Open the Properties > Details Tab and edit out the unwanted values.

Method #2

Use Adobe Photoshop > Open the photo > then File > Save for Web & Devices and make sure that “Metadata” is set to “None”.

Method #3

Use Image MetaData Stripper software. [LINK] Download the software > Open > Choose the image > EXIF Stripped (Done). Choose to make a backup.. just incase..

Next time before you upload a sensitive photo, Make sure you strip it up! Share this info if you found it useful 

How To Keep Your Data Safe?

In a study carried out by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, it was found that there have been more than 360 million personal records lost as a result of data breaches – including everything from Social Security numbers to credit card information. At the same time, organizations, businesses and individuals who are increasingly reliant on digital methods of storing data are finding that the security and integrity of this data can easily be undermined. While backing up data can seem to be a waste of your time and your resources, its value will become apparent if ever you are threatened with data loss. Data can have high personal or commercial value, and it can be devastating to the owner if it is suddenly and irrevocably lost. With a good strategy for backing up data, you need not worry about data loss or corruption.

How Should I Back Up My Data?

There are many different methods you can use to ensure that your data is safe and secure. One of the most simple yet effective measures you can take is to use the services of a CD replication company to create data back-ups. As a whole, the computer industry itself relies on the practice of back-ups to keep sensitive and important data secure. Backups remain today the most foolproof way of safeguarding data for the future. Data stored on physical disks, removed from your computer, is more secure than the data on your hard-drive: if your hard-drive is damaged or your computer attacked by hackers, the physical disks retain the integrity of the data. A duplication service can back up your data to CDs, DVDs or flash memory drives, for easy retrieval. When choosing a provider, ensure that the service makes use of the most up-to-date duplication equipment, and that the security of your data is of the highest priority.

You should ensure that you use very strong passwords. Against a determined hacker, a highly complex password is not a substantial deterrent, but it will preserve the security of your data against any other attack – and the damage that an easy-to-guess password can do is considerable. When building a password, use a mix of special characters, numbers and letters, and ensure that it is longer than 8 characters. Do not use dictionary words.

Backup software copies your data in an easy and systematic fashion, ensuring that the backup files contain the most recent version of the data. Data is frequently copied to external storage, such as an external hard-drive or flash drive; and it may also save a carbon copy on the same hard-disk. The kind of physical storage you choose will depend on the amount of data that you need to backup – today, external hard-drives of up to 1TB are available for personal data backup, which is a huge capacity for anyone. You should ensure that the software you are using is compatible with the physical storage you have chosen – network drives, USB sticks, CD-R and CD-RW and DVD-R are commonly supported.