One of the few journalists entrusted with the story of on-the-run multi-millionaire John McAfee may have accidentally revealed his location in a story published Monday.

McAfee has maintained close contact with a select audience of people since he went into hiding on 11 November after the murder of his neighbor in Belize, Gregory Faull. Wired reporter Joshua Davis, cartoonist Chad Essley, who runs his blog, and now Vice have communicated with the software pioneer.

Vice announced it had gained McAfee's confidence in a story with the headline "We are with John McAfee, suckers".

Thanks to the story's accompanying photo and an observant Twitter user, Vice has also revealed where their reporters are, or recently were.

Twitter user @simplenomad noticed that the article's photo contained revealing metadata and tech site TheNextWeb caught a screengrab of the information which shows that the image was taken in Guatemala.

The 67-year-old multi-millionaire promptly responded to this discovery on his blog, which chronicles his life on the run, and said:

I openly apologize to Vice Magazine for manipulating their recently published photo. I have been ferocioously [sic] put my place by Mr. Rocco for "interfering" with the objectivity of their reporting. I, for my own safety, manipulated the xif data on the image taken from my cellphone, and created a fake emrgency [sic] so that the urgency of movement led, as I knew it would, to the hasty posting on their website. I felt that our tenuous situation demanded action, and that was the action that I chose. I do not believe that Vice will remain with me further. Again, my apologies.

The metadata revealed the latitude and longitude data relating to the photo. It was likely taken in the very recent past as Vice said Monday that its editor-in-chief Rocco Castoro and photographer/videographer Robert King have been following McAfee for the past four days.

It's customary for a smartphone to automatically catalog location data in pictures unless that setting is turned off. Vice has since posted the photo with the location information removed.

McAfee is wanted by the Belize government for questioning in the murder of Faull. Police say he is a person of interest in the case but has expressed fears towards the Belize police. Belize's prime minister Dean Barrow has called him "bonkers".

Reports of his alleged arrest on the Belize-Mexico border appeared over the weekend, but McAfee dismissed them on his blog, saying that a double carrying a North Korean passport was instead taken in.

A Belize spokesman said he had no news of the arrest.