geo location tagging and IPhone :

I am sure lot of articles were written on geo location tagging of the iPhone pictures and with different opinions. For some it was convenience and for others it was privacy issue.

I believe in having a choice. As long as users have ability to turn on or off the given feature, it shouldn't matter. However Apple crossed the line when they stored this data on the phone without user's consent or knowledge. In this blog I am primarily going to talk about extracting metadata information , (including geo location tag ) from any pictures.

Metadata is data about a data, and in our case its data about the picture or photo itself. When was picture taken ? From Which camera it was taken? Where it was taken ?

Why it is important to know about this ? Well to start with , we dont need to upload the pictures on facebook and twitter mindlessly because it contains lot more information about you and your device than you think.

Another reason is that, same technique can be used to exchange information secretly ! Thats cool isn't it ? I can edit the metadata and send the picture to you while for others its just a picture, the receiver will exactly know what was communicated through metadata. To make things even more hard to crack we can use encrypted message in Metadata. Though this project will be for later date, I am going to focus on retrieving information from the pictures.

Today we are going to select any random picture and will determine its location and device identity. You ready?
Pre-requisite:
If you want to have some fun, download EXIF Viewer  and keep world Atlas open in the other window.

Experiment:
To start with, take a picture from your own cell phone or select any picture from your library (preferably picture taken from your Cell phone). I have downloaded the picture as below.

Now drag the picture on to your EXIF viewer and you will see information as below. Most importantly you will see device information in this case iPhone 3GS and the geo location tags where the picture was taken !

Now here comes the best part , take the coordinates in Latitude and Longitude and stick it in to World atlas. In our case it is ,  Latitude N 37 34.67 and Longitude W 122 2.35

You should see something as below. Clearly you know the location that the picture was taken in Fremont California!

Isn't it cool ?  I am sure there are ways and means to strip the metadata from the pictures. I would let you research on it  and if you think some of the metadata strippers are worth sharing then please provide the link in the comment section.