Hello and welcome to GitcodeX
Have you think that your location can be traced and anyone can reach to you just with the help of the photo you have uploaded on your social media account or somewhere else ?
The answer is yes! Your location and many sensitive information can be easily snatch by the photo also.
Today we learn that how can we get tracced by photo and what should we do to keep our self safe.
so, let's Start..
In today's situation most of us are using internet and doing online work. In that we have to upload our sensitive information like documents and photo to internet. We also upload photo and Selfies on social media accounts, and send them to our relatives or to our friends.
Now, when we upload these photos to social media accounts there might be some people we don't know in our social media account, They also see our photos.
Have You ever think that your sensitive Information like Your Exact location and many sesitive data that you don't want to be exposed can be snatched only with that photo you have uploaded ?
Yes it is possible to get your all information with the photo only. Whenever you click an image from your device, like smart phone or DSLR Camera etc, It consists the metadata in it which is called exip information also. In this all the information are saved of the image like from which device the image was taken, what was the time, which was the model of the device, what was the settings when the photo was taken, whether the photo is edited then which software was used to edit the photo and also we can know what was the exact location when we clicked that image.
Now, if you upload this image with metadata, anyone can easily reach to you with that photo, and can use that information in a bad wy also.
So, let's learn how anyone can get these information easily and what should we do to be safe.
We have to use some tools to see the data, To modify it and also to remove those data.
there are some tools which shows the metadata of the image.
How to install Exif tool :
Step-1 :
apt install exif
Step-2 :
apt install libimage-exiftool-perl
How to see and modify the metadata :
Step-1 :
After installing the tool we have to select and copy the name of the image whose information we want.
cd /home/GitcodeX/
(Here you have to select the directory in which you have the image, In my case the image is in my homedirectory)
Step-2 :
exif (image name)
after running this command the tool will saw you the whole information hidden in that image like the device name, resolution, manufacturor of the device , type of the image, time when the image was captured, Location, the settings of the camara and many more. If the image was edit in any software, this tool will show the details of that tool also.
If you want more Details about the image, run the command given under
exif (image name)
This will show you more details about the image.
It was too easy to get the information with this tool.
Now, What can we do if we want to be safe and don't want the information to be fetched by anyone ?
Modify or Remove the metadata from the Image :
1. To modify the metadata :
exiftool -gps= *.(name you want to modify)
(Here, at the place of gps you can select the tag which you want to modify)
2. To remove all metadata
exiftool -all= (image name)
This command will remove your all metadata from the image.
So, You can see how anyone can get the sensitive information form our photo easily.