Can pictures taken with your smart phone be a security threat?

Have you heard of geotagging?  The company I work for posted the following awareness campaign and I thought it was important for me to share with you guys.  I had no idea.  This is one more item for my to do list. 


If you have ever taken a photo with your modern Smartphone (such as an iPhone or Blackberry) and then uploaded the picture to the Internet, you may have put yourself at risk. Most smart phones now come with a built-in GPS device which can capture the location where the photo was taken and embed that information into the picture. The process is known as geotagging. Many people are unaware that the photos they have taken have been geotagged. As of February 2011, a popular photo sharing site called Flikr contained 135,453,348 geotagged items. With sites like Flikr, you can easily click on a map of the world to see the exact location each of the pictures was taken. Source: Apple iPhone Software


How Can Geotagging be Dangerous? An example of the type of risk associated with geotagged photos was made public in August 2010 when Adam Savage of the popular TV show “Myth Busters” took a picture of his personal vehicle and then uploaded it to his Twitter account. The caption of his post included the phrase “off to work.” Adam was unaware that the photo he had taken with his smart phone was automatically geotagged with his geographic location. Anyone on the Internet who came across Adam’s photo could determine the exact location of his house; they could also discover that he was not at home.

How many times have you uploaded pictures of your family vacation, house, new TV, or new car to your favorite social media site? This little bit of data provides the precise longitude and latitude of where the photo was taken, which can lead people to you, your family, and your belongings.