If you upload a picture of your cat, can others pinpoint your location?
When you take a photo with a smartphone, the location where you took the photo is saved inside the photo. In some cases, knowing a photo’s location is convenient, but you need to know when others know your location. Some websites remove a photo’s GPS location when you upload the photo, and others don’t. I was curious to see which websites have photos which can include GPS locations.
To test websites, I uploaded a photo which contained a GPS location, and then downloaded the photo to see if it still had GPS metadata. The chart below shows the results.
Google+, Flickr, and Tumblr’s photos retain their GPS locations. Of course, that is if the uploaded photo included a GPS location. Also, Google+ requires you to opt-in to sharing a photo’s location, so it is optional.
If you’d like to be able to see the GPS location within a photo, try the Photo Investigator. After installing the Photo Investigator, you can use the share button from other apps like Photos, Messages, Mail, and Safari to quickly see the GPS location (if available in that photo) and other photo information. It can be surprising what you can find out from photo metadata.
You can also remove or edit the GPS location of a photo by using the app, with an in-app purchase. As an indie developer, I really appreciate the support from in-app purchases, and also if you’d please buy the items I posted on Craigslist to research this article XP
Cheers,
The Photo Investigator
The Photo Investigator App makes viewing, editing, removing and sending photo metadata easy. Photo and video metadata may include location (if enabled by the camera), date, device, software versions, file size, file name, an “iOS Metadata” section, and many more metadata items. more. Users can view and share DEPTH MAPS by selecting a portrait photo and tapping “Portrait”.
