I’ve really started taking more and more pictures lately. Instead of just keeping them stored locally on my personal computers I’ve started uploading them to a variety of websites. I hadn’t thought much about it but recently read the article "Beware of GPS danger in your photos" by Kim Komando.
The article talks about the potential risk of posting photos to public services when the photo information, or EXIF data may contain geographic location information of where and when the photo was taken. Some cameras can now tag these photos automatically and there are other 3rd party apps and gadgets that will also give you this information. There’s even a fairly low-tech way of doing it.
The question is whether or not you really want to share this information. Imagine being able to be tracked by location and time of your exact movements and locations at various times. I’m not too personally concerned over this, but I can imagine various circumstances where it might be an issue for people.
Kim Komando’s article provides instructions on how to edit the EXIF data on your photos and goes into some other details. My suggestion is to just be aware of the possibilities and the implications. A pet peeve of mine is when people live in constant fear of what might happen. I think you need to balance that with reality though and relax a little bit in the process.