Look Who's Stalking!

Many people post their favorite photos on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter to let friends and family can get a glimpse of what is happening in their lives. But those innocent snapshots could be revealing much more than people think and open to the danger as well. Shanelle Gibson said she loves to take pictures with your smartphone. "I like having a bunch of pictures of my dog and post them on Twitter," she said. "I think it's cute." But one day, she got a tweet from the creator of icanstalku.com, saying he knows where he lives. "I thought it was a little scary," he said. "They were accurate at finding my house, so my immediate response was:" What happened? How do you know me? " As a result, the information contained in photos from Gibson called geotags are integrated into the GPS services for your smartphone. Each time you send an online photo taken with your phone, it is inadvertently giving your whereabouts. "The location can be as accurate as a meter, depending on the GPS signal reception of the device you are using," said Gerald Friedland, of the International Computer Science Institute. Friedland co-authored a study on the privacy implications of geotagging. Results: Most people had no idea of what is still online. "There's enough information out there that you can actually track people and do potential harm to them," he said. That's what Larry Pesce said he wants to warn people. He co-founded icanstalku to warn people after discovering a photo of your child revealed his location - and it can happen to others. "For example, let's take a picture of your nice, new plasma television 50 inches in your house," he said. "And now you're sharing the place of television and an hour later, you are sending a photograph of a 7-Eleven, and now we know that you're not at home." In addition to theft, Pesce said geotagged photos open the possibility of harassment and violence at home, and one does not need to be an expert to get the information. "Almost anyone who can operate a computer and do a few right clicks could know someone's location," said Pesce. Both Pesce and Friedland said they hope more people aware of this potential privacy problem. "In the future, we will be sharing more and more about our online lives, and we really want people to make sure they know what we are sharing," said Pesce. So what can you do about it? You do not have to stop publishing pictures - just turn off the GPS function for photos on your phone. If it does not affect the other capabilities of GPS. Gibson said she turned off her GPS functions and now posts her pictures without worry. She said she expects others to do the same. When A Geek To Go! discovered the site, it was reminiscent of a similar site called PleaseRobMe.com, that has since been taken down. Our first visit to the site yesterday unraveled a local young female writer (name withheld) bundle of personal info including last GPS location with map, a whole page of Twitter Tweets, and her photos. As of this posting, the site seems to have either been taken down, or is offline due to heavy traffic - as the site is run on autopilot by a Perl script, but we've included a sample screenshot. Please choose wisely what you offer up to the outside world!