Your Photos Could Reveal Your Location Even Without Your Phone’s Geotags Turned On!

For anyone concerned about their personal safety, especially those who may be worried about a potential threat knowing where they live (like an ex-partner), please read carefully.

In the past, and to this day, our strongest advice was to disable geolocation settings on your phone's camera. This was to prevent your photos from being automatically tagged with meta-data longitude and latitude coordinates, which could allow someone to pinpoint exactly where a photo was taken.

But things have changed. With the rise of powerful AI tools with image capabilities, it is now possible to analyze photos and accurately determine their location, even when geotags are turned off. These tools are something we have recently used as online investigators to help locate runaways or those who have been groomed and lured away from a family by commercialized sexual predators (pimps). 

Details in the background of an image (like a street sign, landmark, or architectural style) can be used to narrow down a location with surprising precision. AI can detect these subtle clues much faster and more effectively than the human eye. Just recently, we were able to identify a hotel where a photo of the nighttime skyline had been taken from a patio deck on the thirtieth floor of the hotel.

What You Can Do:

• Be very careful about posting photos taken outside your home, especially ones that may include mailboxes, house numbers, school signs, or other unique neighbourhood identifiers.

• Blur or crop out identifiable background features before sharing online.

• Limit who can see your photos on social media. Make sure your privacy settings are up-to-date.

• Teach your kids about this too because what seems like an innocent selfie can sometimes give away more than they realize.

Remember: Just because you turned off location services doesn’t mean your photo isn’t revealing your location.

The White Hatter