How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
 

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
http://regex.info/exif.cgi

I often post photos to photo-sharing sites, whether for the
purpose of social networking (pinterest, facebook, etc)
or for Usenet posts (tinypic, flickr, etc) or for personal
sharing (iCloud, dropbox, google drive, etc).

The EXIF, as you know, can reveal exactly where and when
the photo was taken, and even what camera was used, and, of
course, the time and date, etc, the combination of which could
easily reveal intensely personal information.

When I DOWNLOAD those pictures, generally (always?) the
EXIF information seems to be stripped out.

But ... how much of that personal EXIF information is retained by
the web site (and used for their possibly nefarious purposes)?

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
 

On 10/28/2014 05:54 PM, A. Beck. wrote:

But ... how much of that personal EXIF information is retained by
the web site (and used for their possibly nefarious purposes)?

Dude, a few years ago nobody would have thought it possible (or even
constitutional) in the western world that social media and cloud
services treat your data as their property, that postal service retain
every sender/recipient address, that secret services read and store all
your e-mails, passwords and browsing profiles. And yet, we were shocked
to learn that all this is common practice today.

So you just have to assume that every bit of information that leaves
your local network is intercepted, stored and evaluated. If it is
encrypted it is either decrypted today, or stored for decryption in the
future.

Sorry to break the news to you.

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
 

On 2014-10-28 17:04:41 +0000, JF Mezei said:

On 14-10-28 12:54, A. Beck. wrote:

But ... how much of that personal EXIF information is retained by
the web site (and used for their possibly nefarious purposes)?

If you upload X, assume the web site has X. If that X contains all your
EXIF data, assume they keep it.

There are utilities to strip EXIF data from a photo. In Photoshop, it
isn't so obvious, you have to export to web. That gives you ability to
strip most of the exif data out.

In Photoshop or Lightroom you can select slightly different levels of
EXIF data you choose to include or exclude with the exported image file.
Photoshop: None: Copyright; Copyright & Contact Info: All Except Camera
Info: All.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/FileChute/screenshot_996.jpg

Lightroom: Copyright Only; Copyright & Contact Info Only: All Except
Camera & Camera RAW Info: All Metadata
....and an option to "Remove Location information."
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/FileChute/screenshot_995.jpg

--
Regards,

Savageduck

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
 

On 10/28/14 PDT, 10:17 AM, Martin wrote:
On 10/28/2014 05:54 PM, A. Beck. wrote:

But ... how much of that personal EXIF information is retained by
the web site (and used for their possibly nefarious purposes)?

Dude, a few years ago nobody would have thought it possible (or even
constitutional) in the western world that social media and cloud
services treat your data as their property, that postal service retain
every sender/recipient address, that secret services read and store all
your e-mails, passwords and browsing profiles. And yet, we were shocked
to learn that all this is common practice today.

So you just have to assume that every bit of information that leaves
your local network is intercepted, stored and evaluated. If it is
encrypted it is either decrypted today, or stored for decryption in the
future.

Sorry to break the news to you.

Evaluated? I suppose if it's a photo of a military installation or some
other super secret place, maybe.

Nefarious purpose? Unless sensational, or above, what can they really do
about knowing you shot a photo of Suzie Q in front of the Prado at 14:55
UMT?

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
 

On Tue, 28 Oct 2014 13:04:41 -0400, JF Mezei wrote:

If you upload X, assume the web site has X. If that X contains all your
EXIF data, assume they keep it.

It's one thing to assume, while it's another to actually know.
I asked to figure out if anyone actually knows, since I don't.

There are utilities to strip EXIF data from a photo. In Photoshop, it
isn't so obvious, you have to export to web. That gives you ability to
strip most of the exif data out.

Yes. I often convert to GIF, just to get rid of the EXIF information:
$ convert pic.jpg pic.gif

Or, I just strip out the EXIF information:
$ for f in *.{JPG,JPEG,jpg,jpeg}; do convert -strip $f $f; done

But, the purpose of asking here was to figure out if there are any
known cases where the web site made use of the EXIF information.

Certainly if you know of a picture-sharing site that *keeps* the
EXIF information intact, that would be immensely informative.

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
 

On Tue, 28 Oct 2014 18:17:35 +0100, Martin wrote:

postal service retain every sender/recipient address

I didn't know that the (snail mail) post office retains
all from/to information.

Is that really true and verified?
(or just conjecture?)

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
 

In article , A. Beck. wrote:

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
http://regex.info/exif.cgi

I often post photos to photo-sharing sites, whether for the purpose
of social networking (pinterest, facebook, etc) or for Usenet posts
(tinypic, flickr, etc) or for personal sharing (iCloud, dropbox,
google drive, etc).

The EXIF, as you know, can reveal exactly where and when the photo
was taken, and even what camera was used, and, of course, the time
and date, etc, the combination of which could easily reveal
intensely personal information.

Sorry, but how is this "intensly personal information"? If you have
Lightroom set to add your personal details it would certainly be personal
infromation, but hardly "intensly", that would be if you also add your
social security number and other more intimate details about yourself.

When I DOWNLOAD those pictures, generally (always?) the EXIF
information seems to be stripped out.

Which just means that the thumbnail, or scaled down version of the image,
has EXIF stripped, and that's the version you (and maybe others) can
download, meaning they've taken steps to conceal the somewhat personal
information there is in the image.

But ... how much of that personal EXIF information is retained by
the web site (and used for their possibly nefarious purposes)?

While some social web sites surely create a local scaled down version of
the image, and toss the original, I'd say most keep the original on disk
for future re-scaling.

And with regards to the supposed "nefarious" purposes, whatever purposes
could they have with knowing your camera model, the date the image was
taken and possibly where it was taken? I mean, in theory it could be used
to give you ads about going back to Thailand a year after, but that's
hardly "nefarious", and if you're the kind of person that thinks targeted
ads are nefarious, then you're also the kind of guy that strips the EXIF
yourself first, and upload it in another name, using a secure email address
:-D


--
Sandman[.net]

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
 

In article , A. Beck. wrote:

JF Mezei:
If you upload X, assume the web site has X. If that X contains all
your EXIF data, assume they keep it.

It's one thing to assume, while it's another to actually know. I
asked to figure out if anyone actually knows, since I don't.

JF Mezei:
There are utilities to strip EXIF data from a photo. In Photoshop,
it isn't so obvious, you have to export to web. That gives you
ability to strip most of the exif data out.

Yes. I often convert to GIF, just to get rid of the EXIF
information: $ convert pic.jpg pic.gif

Or, I just strip out the EXIF information: $ for f in
*.{JPG,JPEG,jpg,jpeg}; do convert -strip $f $f; done

But, the purpose of asking here was to figure out if there are any
known cases where the web site made use of the EXIF information.

Certainly if you know of a picture-sharing site that *keeps* the
EXIF information intact, that would be immensely informative.

Flickr, obviously, keeps the EXIF data. They display it on the photo page
and even the location if you allow it, they also use it to gather
statistics about cameras. Not sure what "nefarious" purposes they COULD be
using it for.


--
Sandman[.net]

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
 

On Tue, 28 Oct 2014 18:09:04 +0000, Sandman wrote:

Flickr, obviously, keeps the EXIF data.

Yikes!

I had downloaded images and *never* saw EXIF data in
those downloaded images.

Are you sure about this?

How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
 

On 28/10/2014 12:54 PM, A. Beck. wrote:
How much EXIF information is tracked by photo sharing sites?
http://regex.info/exif.cgi

I often post photos to photo-sharing sites, whether for the
purpose of social networking (pinterest, facebook, etc)
or for Usenet posts (tinypic, flickr, etc) or for personal
sharing (iCloud, dropbox, google drive, etc).

The EXIF, as you know, can reveal exactly where and when
the photo was taken, and even what camera was used, and, of
course, the time and date, etc, the combination of which could
easily reveal intensely personal information.

When I DOWNLOAD those pictures, generally (always?) the
EXIF information seems to be stripped out.

But ... how much of that personal EXIF information is retained by
the web site (and used for their possibly nefarious purposes)?


In Photoshop if you use "Save for web" the EXIF is stripped, if you use
"save as" it's kept.


--
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they
do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under
circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.