Tom’s Tech Tip: Great (and Safe) Vacation Photos – One Less Stressor for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants
It’s summer vacation time and hopefully every Certified Legal Nurse Consultant is taking a break from their legal nurse consulting business and is out there having fun and sharing their photos on social media. But, there is one privacy worry that everyone, CLNC® consultants included, should have and it’s one that many people rarely think about.
It’s the digital privacy of your family vacation and other pictures. Digital cameras add Exchangeable Image File Format (“EXIF”) metadata into your photos. Depending upon your camera, this can include everything from the time and date the photo was taken to the brand and model of camera you’re using, your exposure settings and, the most worrisome component – GPS geotags.
If your digital camera is GPS-enabled it’s coding each of your photos with when and exactly where your family vacation photos were taken. While Facebook’s photo galleries supposedly do not support EXIF data there are many sites that do. If you regularly upload your photos – vacation and otherwise – to sites like Flickr or Photobucket that do support EXIF data you could be building a digital invitation to thieves (or worse) by publically establishing where you live, the places you frequent and, exactly when and how far away you are from home. Talk about an open invitation to miscreants.
If you have a GPS-enabled digital camera disable the GPS. Unless you’re a National Geographic photographer who needs to know exactly where that puffin photo was taken, you really don’t need it. Not only will disabling the GPS protect your privacy, it will extend your camera’s battery life allowing you to take more great vacation photos.
Keep on Techin’,
Tom
P.S. Comment and share whether or not you use GPS-geotags on your photos.
2 thoughts on “Tom’s Tech Tip: Great (and Safe) Vacation Photos – One Less Stressor for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants”
No I do not use GPS geotags on my photos. One less worrisome detail I need not worry about. Thanks for the information. I’ll tuck it in “might need” file, just in case.
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Keep on Techin’,
No I do not use GPS geotags on my photos. One less worrisome detail I need not worry about. Thanks for the information. I’ll tuck it in “might need” file, just in case.
We were in England and Paris a week ago….thanks for the tip. I did not think of that!! In this tech age…there is so much to worry about!!