Did I really just send a photograph of the Pizza Bianca that I’m currently making, or did I also expose my residential address when I sent this photo?

Did you know you can figure out where someone live from a seemingly innocuous photo?

Behind every digital photo is a wealth of information that is not normally visible to a user. They are what we call metadata.

Examples of metadata in a digital photograph range from the exact date and time when the photo was taken, to the camera settings used (eg. aperture, shutter speed, ISO), to the GPS coordinates pin-pointing the location where the photograph was taken.

Whenever you send a photograph taken on your iPhone to someone over iMessage, you’re also sharing all the invisible metadata. And while these metadata are not normally visible, they can be easily viewed with an app that is capable of reading them.

So if you’ve ever sent a photograph of your lock at home to a locksmith, you’ve also passed him your address. If you’ve sent photographs of your kids at school to someone, you’ve also told them where your kids are studying.

Scary? Yeah