Geotag, You’re It! Disabling GPS Coordinates
Geotagging allows others to track your location even though you don’t know it.
With the increased use of Internet-enabled mobile devices such as the Blackberry, Droid and iPhone, geotagging has seen a huge increase in popularity. When social media users take a picture or video and upload it to their page, they are probably transmitting far more data than they think. With the ability to quickly add GPS information to media, smartphones make geotagging a simple task.
So What is Geotagging?
Simply, geotagging is where location or geographical information, such as your GPS coordinates, are added and embedded to different types of media (.jpg, .mov files, etc.). Invisible to the naked eye and the casual observer, geotags are part of the meta-data, or underlying data about the data, that accompanies each file. Examples of meta-data include when the file was created or modified, by whom, using what device and software. This data is often loaded on to your computer along with the original file. Browser plug-ins and certain software programs can reveal the location information to anyone who wants to see it.
Twittervision makes great use of geotagging. Twittervision is a web mashup combining Twitter with Google Maps to create a real time display of tweets across a map (see photo above). It also has a 3D mode that displays a globe of the Earth which spins to pinpoint arriving messages from Twitter.
6 Abuses for Facebook Places
Facebook just added a check-in or location-sharing feature, much like the one provided by FourSquare.com. The feature is designed to accomplish three main tasks:
- Help people share where they are in a social context
- See which friends are near by
- Discover nearby places and new places through friends’ profiles
But, by default, it also allows your friends to tag and publicize your location for you. It’s like being tagged in a photo, except the other person gets to share your location instead of your picture (even if you don’t want others to know where you are, and even if you are not there).
Here are some of the rarely discussed ways that Facebook Places will be used (now or in the future) that you might want to think about before checking in:
- Facebook will sell (share) your current location and profile to stores in your vicinity so that they can server you hyper-targeted advertising (e.g., here’s a coupon for the store you are about to enter).
- Friends who aren’t actually your friends will be able to check you in to questionable Places even when you are not there (the practical jokes for the Check Friends In feature are limitless)
Sileo In the Media
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