Once more for the cheap seats: DISABLE GPS ON YOUR CELL PHONE CAMERA

[dev0n]

I figured that after reading threads like this one that this issue was at least pretty well covered, but a cursory automated crawl of cannabis-related photos on the web last week yielded (no pun intended) a whole mess of GPS data embedded in the EXIF tags of posted grow pictures. WHAT THE HELL?

PEOPLE: A lot of the new smart phones geotag your camera pics by default. At least turn that off, and kill your GPS completely if you can. To illustrate what I'm talking about, here's a pic somebody may have taken of their home grow with their spiffy new Motorola Cliq:

luser@pc ~/Pictures/Bud $ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 luser luser 954K 2010-06-13 20:26 I Grow Illegal Weed.jpg​

This gets posted to the web in raw form cuz the user is an idiot. Now Johnny DEA gets a few seconds free from harassing terminally ill patients in California and decides he wants to find out where this photo was taken. He downloads it and looks at its EXIF tags:

deaboy@raich ~/Bustees $ exiftool I\ Grow\ Illegal\ Weed.jpg
ExifTool Version Number : 7.82
File Name : I Grow Illegal Weed.jpg
Directory : .
File Size : 954 kB
File Modification Date/Time : 2010:06:13 20:26:03-05:00
File Type : JPEG
MIME Type : image/jpeg
Exif Byte Order : Big-endian (Motorola, MM)
Make : Motorola
Camera Model Name : MB200
X Resolution : 72
Y Resolution : 72
Resolution Unit : inches
Modify Date : 2010:06:13 20:26:03
Y Cb Cr Positioning : Centered
Exif Version : 0220
Date/Time Original : 2010:06:13 20:26:03
Create Date : 2010:06:13 20:26:03
Components Configuration : Y, Cb, Cr, -
Flashpix Version : 0100
Color Space : sRGB
Exif Image Width : 2592
Exif Image Height : 1944
Interoperability Index : R98 - DCF basic file (sRGB)
Interoperability Version : 0100
GPS Version ID : 2.2.0.0
GPS Latitude Ref : North
GPS Longitude Ref : West
Compression : JPEG (old-style)
Thumbnail Offset : 578
Thumbnail Length : 6724
Image Width : 2592
Image Height : 1944
Encoding Process : Baseline DCT, Huffman coding
Bits Per Sample : 8
Color Components : 3
Y Cb Cr Sub Sampling : YCbCr4:2:0 (2 2)
GPS Latitude : 38 deg 53' 55.13" N
GPS Longitude : 77 deg 2' 15.69" W
GPS Position : 38 deg 53' 55.13" N, 77 deg 2' 15.69" W
Image Size : 2592x1944
Thumbnail Image : (Binary data 6724 bytes, use -b option to extract)​

See the shit bolded there toward the end? YEAH! Johnny DEA now knows that this photo was snapped at 38 53' 55.13" N, 77 2' 15.69" W -- and his jurisdiction knows no limits!

A lot of people are getting busted for being careless with just this type of shit because they quite frankly didn't know this was the default setting. Don't be one of those people. There are a gazillion tools on the web for every OS to strip these tags, people, google "strip EXIF tags" and please use one.

 

[Pseudo]

w0w!!! wtf?

 

[HillBillMt]

take the time ta use a camera, not yer fukkin phone, these things are designed ta spy on you,,, HHB

 

[mrred]

what hill said, besides you should really leave your phone at phone or take out the battery when your doing something you dont wan no one to keep track of you. Any corrupt cop can plug your number into the celluar phone tracking websites. Its not illegal for a company to keep logs of your every move. I think they can even sell that dad as long your naame isnt connected.

I think when you upload a image to icmag they strip that data, but if you upload to another website or maybe een this one, you want to make sure that data is erased

 

[dev0n]

I can confirm that ICMAG strips out the creation date, GPS data, compression data, scale data, and a bunch of other stuff. FYI I wasn't crawling icmag to test my hypothesis. Your advice is sage, however: don't carry GPS hardware on you anywhere if you don't want people following you, and don't let any data generated by one of these devices onto the net without some cleaning. As my good friend says: "it only takes being right once to justify decades of paranoia."

 

[miltonchitlin]

Very timely post

Very timely post

There was a very disturbing post on facebook. A fellow posted the search warrant papers from his bust on May 20th last month. The search warrant was based on pictures uploaded into his facebook profile. He had grow shots and seemed rather proud of his plants. In some sketchy way the police said they found someone that had actually seen the grow and based on the photos they got the warrant.

This happened in Pittsfield Mass. by a county sheriff. Just 10 plants. The guy's medical status was uncertain the cop said even so it looked over the legal limit. The search warrant had the name and address I don't think I'm revealing that much to get him in trouble, just to warn everyone this is a real concern.

 

[Craven_au]

I can confirm that ICMAG strips out the creation date, GPS data, compression data, scale data, and a bunch of other stuff. FYI I wasn't crawling icmag to test my hypothesis. Your advice is sage, however: don't carry GPS hardware on you anywhere if you don't want people following you, and don't let any data generated by one of these devices onto the net without some cleaning. As my good friend says: "it only takes being right once to justify decades of paranoia."

Thank u very much devOn i had no idea at all thank F*** my phone dose not have GPS.
Found this free software http://www.takenet.or.jp/~ryuuji/minisoft/exifread/english/ and tested it on my phone pic i found no GPS info with this software.

Can some one test this software with a new phone with gps plez.

 

[Dojo]

I can confirm that ICMAG strips out the creation date, GPS data, compression data, scale data, and a bunch of other stuff.quote]

Thats another reason why I love this fucking place...they take care of us 'round here

 

[SOTF420]

Fantastic post, and if you are going to take pics you are much better off using a digital camera that you bought with cash! The image files just being in your phone are not safe either really because it is all part of the network and the data does get backed up whether you want to believe it or not. Whatever is going on in your phone no matter what you think, there is a record of it.

 

[dev0n]

MiltonChitlin bingo: I've been hearing about police investigators and gov prosecutors hitting Facebook, Craigslist, Livejournal, Myspace, Orkut, Twitter, etc and either trying to submit data from there as evidence in criminal prosecutions or bringing it up during sentencing to tack more time on. People live *way* too much online and need to be aware of what they're doing.

And yes, unless you're scrubbing *every* pic of EXIF data, don't take pics of "targetable" activity on anything but a digital camera that you paid cash for.

 

[SOTF420]

Try to buy whatever you can with fucking cash nowadays for that matter!

 

[Craven_au]

I have been taking pic using my Sony Ericsson k800i for about 3 years now because i don't need to buy batteries it dose not have GPS so i think i'm fine and i only post on ICMAG usually delete pic as soon as they uploaded i will be more careful now thanks again dev0n.

Would love more advice on phone safety i do know that all text message are recorded in Australia.

 

[coxswain]

I can't believe people even think about taking photos with cell phone. Turning off GPS!? Are you insane? Turn off your g.d. phone all together or leave it at home. Buy another cell phone only for emergency if you're deep into the wild. It's cheap! Carry two memory cards with you so you switch to the one with pretty flowers and birds and put it in the camera when you're leaving patch.

 

[Beanfish]

Not really pertaining to GPS and pics but I remember reading something a few years back from a guy that claimed to work for a large cellular provider. He said the only way to truly disable GPS is to remove the battery. He went on to say that a cell phone can be tracked even when it's powered off and that the company he worked for only needs a court order to [legally] enable GPS tracking. Apparently this was not all that uncommon...

 

[coxswain]

Not really pertaining to GPS and pics but I remember reading something a few years back from a guy that claimed to work for a large cellular provider. He said the only way to truly disable GPS is to remove the battery. He went on to say that a cell phone can be tracked even when it's powered off and that the company he worked for only needs a court order to [legally] enable GPS tracking. Apparently this was not all that uncommon...

You don't need GPS to track cell phone. Google triangulation. And yes to be 100% sure take the battery out or simply leave it at home. Problem solved. Don't be stupid.

 

[Hazy Lady]

First class warning thread, thank-you devOn and other posters.

 

[Beanfish]

You don't need GPS to track cell phone. Google triangulation. And yes to be 100% sure take the battery out or simply leave it at home. Problem solved. Don't be stupid.

Agreed, but I'm not sure if triangulation would work if the phone is powered down. GPS, on the other hand, is rumored to be traceable unless the battery is removed.

But you're correct, the only way to be sure is to pull the battery or leave it at home. Bringing a cell phone to your outdoor plot, for example, is asking to trouble IMO.

 

[bterzz]

for idiots like myself, who already took pictures with my phone, and sent them to my random email, whats the best way to get rid of my fucking sloppy evidence.

i looked on my phone and it saves internally not externally, (the option was set to internal, thankfully) but id like to just strap a bomb to my phone and switch phone providers.

any tips? fuck im dumb. negative rep me for being a fucking idiot.

 

[coxswain]

for idiots like myself, who already took pictures with my phone, and sent them to my random email, whats the best way to get rid of my fucking sloppy evidence.

i looked on my phone and it saves internally not externally, (the option was set to internal, thankfully) but id like to just strap a bomb to my phone and switch phone providers.

any tips? fuck im dumb. negative rep me for being a fucking idiot.

Just don't do it anymore. You can't undone that mistake. It's not like uncle sam is monitoring all the numbers in the system 24/7/365 and calculating triangulation in real time. That would be enormous database, but you never know. So, be safe, leave your cell @ home.

 

[Beanfish]

for idiots like myself, who already took pictures with my phone, and sent them to my random email, whats the best way to get rid of my fucking sloppy evidence.

i looked on my phone and it saves internally not externally, (the option was set to internal, thankfully) but id like to just strap a bomb to my phone and switch phone providers.

any tips? fuck im dumb. negative rep me for being a fucking idiot.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Unless you're already being watched, you're probably ok. But better safe than sorry I say.

I'd delete, the pics from my email if I were worried about it. Internal storage simply means "stored on the phones internal memory" and external means "stored on the removable memory card" if you have one installed in your phone.