secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University Geotagging – Where Cyberspace comes to your space Craig Valli & Peter Hannay secau – Security Research Centre

secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University Geotagging Where people use GPS services to provide locational data about themselves or objects This has been enabled by a combination of devices –iphone, Android & Samsung phones –GPS enabled cameras

secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University Geotagging Geotagging most commonly refers to the tagging of images with location data. However the use of geotagging has been extended to include elements of objects on social media services such as Twitter & Flickr.

secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University Geotagging Images Geotagging in images involves the insertion of location data in latitude & longitude format into an image file. The location data is stored within the EXIF records for the image, tools such as ExifTool are able to extract this location data.

secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University Geotagging Social Media Geotagging in social applications is achieved in much the same manner as that of images, however instead of tagging individual files, objects within a social media construct are tagged with geolocation data. The geolocation data is harvested from media at the time of upload or provided by the client application at the time of submission. Two are Flickr and Twitter

secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University Twitter Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows its users to post 140 character status updates The ability to tag posts with geolocation information was added in November of 2009 Through the Twitter API there are a number of calls that exist to allow searching for posts In this manner it is possible to profile users behaviours or identify users who frequent specific locations.

secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University Flickr Flicker is a social photo sharing service, users are able to upload images to Flickr. These can then be viewed publicly or by a restricted group of people. Geolocation support is present within Flickr and is achieved through the harvesting of geolocation data from the meta data of images as they are uploaded API calls available to developers allow for searches to be performed based on location, user and many other parameters

secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University The Good The identification of images taken at a specific location at a specific time, for example it would be possible to search for all flicker images taken during an assassination within a certain radius of the event, the resulting images may provide additional intelligence aiding an investigation. Unwitting embedment of evidence

secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University The Bad Loss of personal privacy and safety Ability to be tracked...but then some people like this How does a warrant that stipulates that a person must maintain physical distances hold in cyberspace.

secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University The Ugly A obvious and sinister use for this technology is the ability for the predator to track its prey. A cyber/stalkers dream to use to locate individuals of interest. Some of our common desktop tools allow this behaviour to prevail now. You can now be unwittingly located by a simple photograph

secau – Security Research Centre Edith Cowan University Recommendations If you are concerned (and you should be) about your geolocation privacy then switch it off! Be aware that photos that may be taken of you may contain locational data you do not want known. Be careful of sharing photos within online services unless you have stripped out metadata