LCplCombat - Thank you for a great post.
I went ahead and installed irfanview and the plugin required to read the GPS information held in the EXIF of each file.....I can confirm I have found at least one image on BOCN with the GPS coordinates in it, but thankfully most that have EXIF info do not contain coordinates. It also looks like at some point BOCN admins did something to all the images, as a good percentage seem to have been renamed to replace spaces with underscores, and that also process also stripped out any EXIF information.
For anyone worried about this, hopefully Spotter/Bolo can comment, but I can only suggest the following options:-
1. Don't post JPGs online ever - use other image formats if you're able to control this..such as BMP, TIFF, GIF, PNG etc.. (admittedly you probably cant control this on an mobile/cell phone)
2. Use a freeware tool to strip EXIF information from files before posting online - such as "Easy EXIF Delete" (
http://download.cnet.com/Easy-Exif-Delete/3000-2248_4-75157345.html) - I must admit, I've not tried it.
3. The most sensible option is that the BOCN admins run a daily job to strip EXIF information for you, like they appear to have done, once in the past. (This obviously puts the trust on them)
..and if you're uber paranoid, the obvious last point is
4. Don't post anything online to any website ever. -- As soon as you connect to any public network, service, etc, you will be leaving an information fingerprint you're probably not aware of.
And as they used to say on Crimewatch, "don't have nightmares, do sleep well"
