Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff. My name is Chris Poette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor at how stuff works dot com and sittre
Speaker 1: across from me, as he is typically on these occasions,
Speaker 1: his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland. I kicked the map into
Speaker 1: the creek. That was a short quote, and if you
Speaker 1: know the genesis of that quote, please let us know.
Speaker 1: And if you don't, I'm so scared. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: I give it away. Now. We're going to talk today
Speaker 1: about geo tagging and its relationship to privacy and how
Speaker 1: how geo tagging can be a really cool thing and
Speaker 1: can be a really neat way to interact with people
Speaker 1: online as well as to keep track of things that
Speaker 1: you've on, and also how sometimes it can be a
Speaker 1: bad thing, like you can give tools to people you
Speaker 1: may not want to associate with ways to harass you
Speaker 1: and make your life miserable. Yeah, I'd like to uh
Speaker 1: to make it clear to we we bring these kinds
Speaker 1: of things up a lot, and we get criticized on
Speaker 1: occasion from people who seem to feel that we're unequivocally
Speaker 1: saying that these computerized tools are dangerous and scary and
Speaker 1: therefore you should turn off all technology. And that's that's
Speaker 1: not what we're saying. Um, like just about every technology
Speaker 1: we've ever mentioned on the podcast, not all of them,
Speaker 1: but the vast majority of them. Um, you can use
Speaker 1: tools for all kinds of purposes. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: hit somebody in the head with a hammer, but it's
Speaker 1: really great for pounding in nails. Uh man, wait what
Speaker 1: I have been using the hammer in a very limited way.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't know that what's gonna happen? So bang, Thanks Maxwell,
Speaker 1: thank you. Um yeah, doesn't that beat all? Um, No,
Speaker 1: we're off to our rollicking stuff. No. Geo tagging is
Speaker 1: one of those things that that can be really really
Speaker 1: useful for all kinds of informational purposes. It can be
Speaker 1: used for fun. Um. But if you give like you know,
Speaker 1: put your phone number up on on a billboard, and
Speaker 1: some people you like, we'll call, and other people you
Speaker 1: don't will, so so just be careful how you use that.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the essential message. But let's get into
Speaker 1: geo tagging and what it is and maybe you know
Speaker 1: and and great much greater detail will get into the
Speaker 1: privacy issue here. Sure. Yeah, so geo tagging is exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. It is tagging some sort of
Speaker 1: information with geographical a layer of geographical information. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about metadata here, and metadata is information about
Speaker 1: some information. Well yeah, information about information. That's usually how
Speaker 1: it's described. But um, you know you have a a
Speaker 1: book in front of you. Well, it's got a title. Um,
Speaker 1: you can talk about the publisher, You could talk about
Speaker 1: what kind of paper it was printed on. You can
Speaker 1: get into all kinds of information about how many pages
Speaker 1: it has, how many words per page on average. But
Speaker 1: when we talk about geo tagging, you could geo tag
Speaker 1: a book. Heyes, you know it came from London. Look
Speaker 1: it says that right there on the page. It's on
Speaker 1: my shelf exactly. But yeah. You take a photo on
Speaker 1: your smartphone and it may include information from the GPS
Speaker 1: device that you have also in your smartphone. So you
Speaker 1: can say, go to the Grand Canyon and take photos
Speaker 1: of your your summer vacation, and you could say this
Speaker 1: is specifically where this photo was shot. So if somebody,
Speaker 1: one of your friends. You post this on your photo
Speaker 1: sharing account on the web. When of your friends wants
Speaker 1: to go, oh, man, I'm going into the Grand Canyon
Speaker 1: this summer too. Where where did you take that picture?
Speaker 1: I want to see that for myself, we could say, well,
Speaker 1: these are the coordinates, So there you go, geo tagging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's actually a lot of different potential all applications for this.
Speaker 1: There's the the fun vacation sort of version that you
Speaker 1: were talking about. For example, let's say that you go
Speaker 1: on a road trip and along the road trip, you
Speaker 1: take all these different photos and then you want to
Speaker 1: organize the photos into a online photo album, maybe even
Speaker 1: something that's more like an interactive scrapbook, and you want
Speaker 1: to go and create that. Well, there are programs that
Speaker 1: will allow you to do that, and they what they
Speaker 1: do is they read the meta data connected to those images.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you're using a smartphone or you're
Speaker 1: using a digital camera that has a GPS receiver built
Speaker 1: into it, because there are some out there, not all
Speaker 1: of them, but there are some, and you take photos.
Speaker 1: What's cool is that most cameras, now almost all of them,
Speaker 1: will time stamp a photo yes, so it'll give you
Speaker 1: an exact date and time that that photo was taken.
Speaker 1: So as long as the cameras you know, clock is
Speaker 1: correct and calendar is correct, you're gonna have that information
Speaker 1: included on the image. Then you have the additional information
Speaker 1: of the GPS UH coordinates, so you've got longitude and
Speaker 1: latitude that gets thrown in there. With the right program,
Speaker 1: you could dump a ton of digital not really a
Speaker 1: ton because they don't wear anything, but you can throw
Speaker 1: up a lot of digital photos into that and have
Speaker 1: it arranged those photos by date and time and by location,
Speaker 1: so you could create an interactive map where someone could
Speaker 1: then go and look at how you went from on
Speaker 1: your vacation, like from following the photos, they can retrace
Speaker 1: your steps, see the sites you saw, and sort of
Speaker 1: live your vacation just by going through these links. And
Speaker 1: you know, that's just a basic application of geotagging. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of other ones. I mean, there's there
Speaker 1: are tons of reasons to use it for marketing. I
Speaker 1: used an example recently when I was talking about this
Speaker 1: on on a local news program. For example, let's see
Speaker 1: you have a food truck and let's say there's maybe
Speaker 1: four or five locations that you take this food truck
Speaker 1: to reag liarly throughout the week, and as a way
Speaker 1: of showing people where this is, you may take photos
Speaker 1: of your food truck so one they know what it
Speaker 1: looks like, but you include geotagging information and a and
Speaker 1: a a map application so it shows exactly where that
Speaker 1: truck is located when it's you know, when it's operating hours,
Speaker 1: have it at that particular spot exactly, so then you've
Speaker 1: got a map that pops up. There are applications that
Speaker 1: incorporate this in such a seamless way that you really
Speaker 1: don't have to do anything other than make sure that
Speaker 1: GPS setting is turned on. Once you've done that, it
Speaker 1: does all the work for you. For example, twit pick
Speaker 1: does this if I take a photo with my my
Speaker 1: Android phone and I have the GPS feature turned on
Speaker 1: when I'm taking photos so it shares location data, and
Speaker 1: I enable the location data on twit pick. So there
Speaker 1: are two spots where I have to agree to do this. Um,
Speaker 1: if I do both of those things and I take
Speaker 1: a photo using my camera and then upload it to
Speaker 1: twit pick, not only will it include that geographic location,
Speaker 1: it will actually pull up a Google Maps image and
Speaker 1: show where that photo was taken. And if you want,
Speaker 1: you can switch map from map view mode to satellite
Speaker 1: view mode and see a satellite picture of where you know,
Speaker 1: where I was standing when I took that photo. We
Speaker 1: tried this on camera and it worked so well. We
Speaker 1: actually I took a photo from uh we have a
Speaker 1: balcony here at how stuff works in a nice deck really, um,
Speaker 1: that I stood out on and I took photos of
Speaker 1: and using the satellite you could see the exact location
Speaker 1: I stood where I took those photos, and it was,
Speaker 1: you know, a satellite photo of it, not just a
Speaker 1: map location. So that's kind of cool. You can use
Speaker 1: that for all sorts of reasons. Um. But here's the
Speaker 1: thing about data, about data people, if people know how
Speaker 1: to access it, they can exploit it. Um. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a bad idea. Uh uh well okay, before ideeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, I was gonna say this in a specific instance,
Speaker 1: but let me back up for just one second. You
Speaker 1: can there, Uh. Geo tagging is something that you know.
Speaker 1: Of course I knew about it. It's it's pretty common today,
Speaker 1: especially for people with with smartphones. Um. But when I
Speaker 1: when I looked into it looking for a little history,
Speaker 1: as we were wont to do on this show. UM.
Speaker 1: I think the first mentions I saw when they were
Speaker 1: still people were still talking about it as though it
Speaker 1: were a new phenomenon. We're around two thousand seven, two eight,
Speaker 1: and that's when uh, consumer smartphones started becoming more popular.
Speaker 1: The iPhone had come out in two thousand seven, and
Speaker 1: that really launched the smartphone craze, at least in the
Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, for consumers, of course, you know, UM
Speaker 1: and UH, of course there were the uh the memory
Speaker 1: cards used in digital cameras like the I Fi that well,
Speaker 1: even if you don't have a GPS enabled camera will
Speaker 1: store GPS information in the an images metadata UM, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool because you don't have to have a
Speaker 1: GPS a camera would built in GPS to use that UM.
Speaker 1: And I've read pretty good reviews of that. UM. So
Speaker 1: this is something coming on and now that we can
Speaker 1: do this UM, all sorts of other opportunities have sprung up.
Speaker 1: People use services like UM, like go Wala or four square.
Speaker 1: They want to tag where they are and not necessarily images.
Speaker 1: They'll say, you know, hey, I'm at the pub, you know,
Speaker 1: on the corner and come hang out if you're in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood exactly. UM. Twitter and Twitter is the same way,
Speaker 1: and Facebook as well. They have there's Facebook places and
Speaker 1: there's also that you can turn location data on on
Speaker 1: Twitter if you want to. Yes, that's right, And that's
Speaker 1: exactly where I was going to go with this, UM,
Speaker 1: because you know you can you can say this. You
Speaker 1: can tell people on Twitter and Facebook and UM through
Speaker 1: images you shoot with your phone or your digital camera
Speaker 1: where you are, UM, and that can be great if
Speaker 1: you want to share details about your vacation. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: on a business trip and you're somebody who likes to
Speaker 1: use social media to um point out how you're different
Speaker 1: from everybody else in your colleagues, and that's how you
Speaker 1: network with your colleagues and UM, it shows that you're
Speaker 1: really valuable in your field. Well, maybe you're on a
Speaker 1: business trip and you're taking photos and you're tagging everything
Speaker 1: and you're showing people your exact location, and then people
Speaker 1: realize you're not home. And somebody who happens to know
Speaker 1: who you are, particularly who you are, and maybe they
Speaker 1: know where you live, they go way out. They're not home.
Speaker 1: So if I went to their house, maybe no one
Speaker 1: is there, um, and that can be dangerous. And it's
Speaker 1: it's possible if you don't use your real name on
Speaker 1: on the social network and you're just taking photos, um,
Speaker 1: and you could you could take photos of your summer
Speaker 1: vacation and post them when you get home, and so
Speaker 1: you have your GEO tagged photos and you haven't revealed
Speaker 1: to everybody that you are out last week. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm home now, so I went on a vacation to
Speaker 1: so and so. Here are the photos. Yea, And that's
Speaker 1: that's great. But if you're if you're not careful and
Speaker 1: you post the wrong information, the right the exact right
Speaker 1: information at the wrong time, if you could clue people
Speaker 1: in that you're not home, or if you have people
Speaker 1: that might want to do you harm. I hope that's
Speaker 1: not the case, but yeah, if you have somebody that
Speaker 1: you've upset and they are following you and know exactly
Speaker 1: where you are, then they can come find you. That
Speaker 1: could be a little nerve wracking. We can dive into
Speaker 1: this even a little deeper because there are there are
Speaker 1: very easy ways where people can find out where you
Speaker 1: live that some some of which would be under your
Speaker 1: control and some of which may not. For example, let's
Speaker 1: say that you've taken a photo of either your home
Speaker 1: or your inside your home. Maybe you're throwing a party
Speaker 1: and you're taking pictures of the party, and let's say
Speaker 1: you've got the location data turned on there. Well, that
Speaker 1: metadata is going to be connected to those those images,
Speaker 1: and if you upload those images to certain uh photo albums,
Speaker 1: online photo albums, especially if you have it arranged that
Speaker 1: it's public uh, there's the possibility someone could then pull
Speaker 1: that image, look at the metadata and say, ah, this
Speaker 1: is where this person's houses. I did not know that before.
Speaker 1: But because they've posted these pictures of an event that
Speaker 1: they weren't thinking about, like oh, this shows where my
Speaker 1: house is, they're thinking this was Bob's party as surprise party.
Speaker 1: It was great's a lot of fun. We took all
Speaker 1: these photos. That could be that could lead to be
Speaker 1: a problem. It could also be a problem if you
Speaker 1: if someone who's visiting you takes photos and then they
Speaker 1: upload it into some public online UH photo album and
Speaker 1: their metadata is turned on. In that case, it's not
Speaker 1: even under your control. You're not the one who took
Speaker 1: the photos. But if they tag you in those photos,
Speaker 1: or they mentioned that they're at your house and that
Speaker 1: data is in that if that metadata connected to the photo,
Speaker 1: someone could learn where you live. And this might not
Speaker 1: be a big deal for some of you may not
Speaker 1: think that that's a that scary a notion and and
Speaker 1: for most of it's probably not um but if you
Speaker 1: happen to do things like use Twitter or Facebook to
Speaker 1: post when you go on vacation, like you're saying, I'm
Speaker 1: leaving tonight, I'm so excited, Well, then that you've just
Speaker 1: given the clue that all right, I know where this
Speaker 1: person lives, I know they're not going to be home,
Speaker 1: that this is the perfect opportunity to try and rob them. Now. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're careful about it and you don't
Speaker 1: share your your address, then there's less danger of that happening.
Speaker 1: If it does happen, you can pretty much narrow it
Speaker 1: down to the people who know you. And then you're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a reckoning because I know it's one
Speaker 1: of you jerks, and I'm gonna narrow it down. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, like I said, with these these systems, it
Speaker 1: can it can really come back and haunt you. It's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting too, also to see which services preserve
Speaker 1: the meta data and which ones strip it out. So,
Speaker 1: for example, twit pick, the meta data is preserved if
Speaker 1: you turn your location on in whatever device you're using
Speaker 1: to capture the photo, and you turn it on on
Speaker 1: twit pick. Now, granted, like I said, you have to
Speaker 1: choose to share it. Um so that's an opt in,
Speaker 1: which is good. We we like opt in, we don't
Speaker 1: like opt out. You know, where you make the conscious
Speaker 1: choice to share the information as a default. Yes, if
Speaker 1: you if that's the if it's default, to opt into it,
Speaker 1: that's good. Um So if you so, let's say that
Speaker 1: you have all that you share it, that meta data
Speaker 1: will be preserved. What's interesting to me is one major
Speaker 1: place where people store photos that strips the meta data out,
Speaker 1: and I would have never guessed it is it Facebook.
Speaker 1: It is if you upload an image that has meta
Speaker 1: data in it that that connects it to a location,
Speaker 1: and you upload it to your Facebook profile, and then
Speaker 1: someone were to go into that photo album, download the
Speaker 1: image and open it up in some sort of editor
Speaker 1: software to kind of see what the metadata is, they
Speaker 1: are not going to find location data in there. Interested
Speaker 1: strips it out. So Facebook actually does not support geo
Speaker 1: tagging right now as of the recording of this podcast.
Speaker 1: Now could that change? It could and maybe that they
Speaker 1: incorporate pictures in their places. Uh. Feature in places, of course,
Speaker 1: is where you virtually check into locations capital places, yes,
Speaker 1: and and other people can check you into there as well.
Speaker 1: You have to improve it, but other people, like let's
Speaker 1: say that you're at a restaurant and your friends are there,
Speaker 1: and your friends are on you know, going through the
Speaker 1: Facebook places to check in, they can check you in
Speaker 1: as well, but you have to approve it before it
Speaker 1: will pop up everywhere. Um, there may come a time
Speaker 1: where photographs are also supported by this feature. Right now
Speaker 1: they are not again as of the recording of this podcast.
Speaker 1: So that was interesting to me that Facebook does not
Speaker 1: actually support geo tagging. Now you could still tell people
Speaker 1: where that was like if you wanted to. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's nothing stopping you from putting it in the caption.
Speaker 1: And there are also services out there that allow you
Speaker 1: to upload photos and then you put them on a map.
Speaker 1: Like you you you physically in input the address into
Speaker 1: the service, so it's not pulling from the meta data
Speaker 1: of the picture. It's requiring user input to geographically placed photos.
Speaker 1: That's a little different. It still can come back and
Speaker 1: haunt you. Yeah. Yeah, Now, I mean another example of
Speaker 1: something there. There have been a number of articles, uh
Speaker 1: in the media recently about geotagging and the possibility that
Speaker 1: it could lead to trouble if you're not careful, and
Speaker 1: one of those was, you know, if you have a
Speaker 1: lot of maybe you're taking you finally splurged and got
Speaker 1: that home entertainment system that you've always been wanting, and
Speaker 1: then you take photos of it and you know, share
Speaker 1: that in public with people, and you didn't turn off
Speaker 1: the geo tagging on your phone, and some random person
Speaker 1: happens on it and goes, well, it is a really
Speaker 1: nice new entertainment system. I wonder if they're home during
Speaker 1: the week during normal business hours where most people are
Speaker 1: out working, and I have their exact location, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that that could be that could be hazardous. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are so many things that you could
Speaker 1: use it for, uh, for good purposes, um, you know research, um,
Speaker 1: you know, personal research, geneal genealogical research. Um. You can
Speaker 1: use it for geocashing purposes too. We had that that
Speaker 1: great podcast a long time ago. Now it seems like, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean they're there are games that you
Speaker 1: can play with geographical information. Um, you just have to
Speaker 1: be careful what you what you're sharing, and don't forget
Speaker 1: that there may be some kinds of information you do
Speaker 1: want to tag in some that you don't. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're making a travel guide for someone and you're giving
Speaker 1: them suggestions of where to go within a certain city,
Speaker 1: geo tagging is a great tool. If you're using a
Speaker 1: website and interactive website to show people, Look, you know,
Speaker 1: just down the street from this one museum, is this
Speaker 1: really cool restaurant that, uh that I recommend because of
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. You know that sort of stuff. It
Speaker 1: comes in really handy. But yeah, there are other besides
Speaker 1: the whole burglary uh possibility. There's also the question of
Speaker 1: things like attracting the wrong sort of attention, like stalkers.
Speaker 1: That's a very real concern, um, especially if you're using
Speaker 1: something like Twitter and you don't have a protected uh feed,
Speaker 1: Like if you if you have a public feed, that
Speaker 1: means every single thing you publish is going to be
Speaker 1: published on the public feed and theoretically anyone can see it.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you are, I don't know, a
Speaker 1: dashingly handsome co host of a technology podcast, and you
Speaker 1: take pictures of all your favorite places that you like
Speaker 1: to go. And then some uh incredibly attractive young lady
Speaker 1: who has desires upon this bald, handsome co host of
Speaker 1: a technology podcast where to look at those photos and
Speaker 1: that meta data and say, hey, these are his favorite spots.
Speaker 1: All I have to do is go to one of these,
Speaker 1: and sooner or later he's going to show up, and
Speaker 1: then I can tell him how much I love him.
Speaker 1: Why has that not happened yet? I guess I haven't
Speaker 1: turned that GPS information on. That's the problem. I haven't,
Speaker 1: dang it. You know, there's always something, but no, no, seriously, though,
Speaker 1: to be to be, I'm making light of it, but
Speaker 1: this is really a very serious situation, and that you know,
Speaker 1: you you need to be aware that the information you're
Speaker 1: sharing could, if you're not careful with it, be used
Speaker 1: by other people to to harass you, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and that we don't want to see that happen. Now Again,
Speaker 1: we are not telling you don't use geotagging, just be
Speaker 1: aware of when you're using it, the situations you're using
Speaker 1: it in and the purpose you're using it. Um, Because
Speaker 1: again it could be a really fun way to share
Speaker 1: information about yourself, but you may not want to share everything. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's a good point. Um. It's
Speaker 1: just it's just one of those things where we're not
Speaker 1: saying no, don't ever do it. Just um, you know,
Speaker 1: just think about it. And yeah, the odds someone will
Speaker 1: someone when someone will invariably right in and say, you know,
Speaker 1: you said geotagging was bad and I shouldn't do it, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the odds are pretty slim that some of this is
Speaker 1: going to happen. Um, But you know, just think about it.
Speaker 1: It's just like, just like if you live in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a pretty heavily um popular popularized area. Right.
Speaker 1: Let's say like you live in a in a big city, right,
Speaker 1: you don't normally leave your car unlocked, or you'll leave
Speaker 1: your house or apartment unlocked, because even though the likelihood
Speaker 1: that you'll be targeted or for a home invasion or
Speaker 1: a car burglary is low, you don't go tempting fate.
Speaker 1: Same sort of thing, and again, you know their ties
Speaker 1: when you using geo tagging is perfectly fine. You just
Speaker 1: you may not want to use it all the time.
Speaker 1: Like you're visiting your buddy and you're taking pictures, you
Speaker 1: might want to You might want to at least ask
Speaker 1: your friend, like should I turn GEO tagging off? Because
Speaker 1: otherwise people are gonna know exactly where this place is. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's funny because that you would say that, because
Speaker 1: I was thinking specifically of the rash of um break
Speaker 1: ins that has been happening in businesses here in Atlanta
Speaker 1: over the past few months. A lot of there have
Speaker 1: been a lot of break ins and smallish businesses like
Speaker 1: strip malls, uh, from people who are breaking in to
Speaker 1: steal flat screen TVs off the walls, places that are
Speaker 1: that are offering TV for their customers in waiting rooms
Speaker 1: and things like that. Um. And you know, if you're
Speaker 1: taking a picture of some place while you're out, UM
Speaker 1: what GEO tagging information? It's not necessarily your information, or
Speaker 1: you might be the business owner and people are you know, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is the cool place where I like to go
Speaker 1: on on Thursdays. You know everybody who's here we have
Speaker 1: trivia night or whatever. And uh, if you happen to
Speaker 1: tag that information and uh, it gets posted to the net.
Speaker 1: It could reveal information about your establishment with the kind
Speaker 1: of equipment that you have available, and it could inadvertently
Speaker 1: make it known to uh, to thieves. So that's you know,
Speaker 1: of course, some businesses go ahead and advertise that you
Speaker 1: want to yeah, and I'm not saying that, Yeah, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to uh, I don't mean to intimate
Speaker 1: that that's the reason that that happened, but it could.
Speaker 1: It could give people clues. And again, if you're the
Speaker 1: business owner, then you're gonna say, hey, look, I've got
Speaker 1: this great entertainment. You're gonna advertise that. You're not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to stop somebody from taking a photo of uh,
Speaker 1: their friends having a good time at this place, because
Speaker 1: they're gonna say, well, yeah, I want that will build bell,
Speaker 1: build word of mouth. You know, it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: tricky situation. I mean, it's one of those things where, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you weren't you wouldn't necessarily think of it.
Speaker 1: Even a few years ago. I wanted to kind of
Speaker 1: segue this into a discussion about privacy in the web
Speaker 1: in general, in the sense that I recently read an
Speaker 1: essay and then responded to it. The essay was Your
Speaker 1: Life torn? Open Sharing is a Trap written by Andrew Keene.
Speaker 1: It was published on Wired dot co dot UK on
Speaker 1: February three eleven, and in it, Keen bemoans the fact
Speaker 1: that we are reaching a point where everyone is sharing
Speaker 1: lots of information about themselves, not just geotagging, but that
Speaker 1: is an element of it, but everything like you know,
Speaker 1: thoughts and uh and relationships, and that privacy is becoming
Speaker 1: decreasingly important. So Keen's point was that this is going
Speaker 1: to mean that humanity itself will change, because privacy is
Speaker 1: part of being human, and if we are adicate privacy,
Speaker 1: then we're eradicating part of what it is to be human.
Speaker 1: H and I took Umbridge to a couple of his points,
Speaker 1: one of which was that I don't feel that that
Speaker 1: social networking necessarily means that you lose all your privacy
Speaker 1: because in most of these situations you have, First of all,
Speaker 1: you have the choice of whether or not to use
Speaker 1: the social networking at all. Yes, and that is an
Speaker 1: important thing to note. It's not compulsory. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: there's no law that says you have to be on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: etcetera right. And second of all, you most of these
Speaker 1: services have levels of protection that you can choose to
Speaker 1: either initiate or turn off. For example, with the twit
Speaker 1: pick thing that I mentioned, you know, again you have
Speaker 1: to have the GPS location stuff turned on your smartphone
Speaker 1: or camera and you have to have it turned on
Speaker 1: on twit pick for that to take effect. If it's
Speaker 1: not turned on on twit pick, that metadata will not
Speaker 1: be included. And so you don't you know, you have
Speaker 1: to choose to to share this information. So it's not
Speaker 1: like it's something where Big Brother has appeared and we're
Speaker 1: all four. He was making a lot of nineteen eight
Speaker 1: four references. And here's the thing is that in nineteen four,
Speaker 1: if you don't know that story into it's a government
Speaker 1: mandated society where people are under observation all the time
Speaker 1: by a very oppressive, very invasive government. There's no choice there.
Speaker 1: But with with social networking there is. It's all choice.
Speaker 1: You can choose. You know, how much you share and
Speaker 1: how little you share. And uh, I also just don't
Speaker 1: think that it's going to lead to the downfall of mankind.
Speaker 1: So I had some some things to say about that,
Speaker 1: and if you want to read more, I wrote a
Speaker 1: blog post about and if you want to read keynes essay,
Speaker 1: I do recommend reading it. He makes some good points
Speaker 1: things that I do not disagree with. I just felt
Speaker 1: that some of his central premises were a little faulty. Um.
Speaker 1: And the other element is the idea between using the
Speaker 1: internet to share this information versus using your memory to
Speaker 1: remember stuff. Because we've talked about that in the past.
Speaker 1: We talked about Nicholas cars famous article is Google making
Speaker 1: as stupid? We did a whole episode about that. Um.
Speaker 1: The idea being that we are using computers and the
Speaker 1: cloud to store information that normally we would just store
Speaker 1: in our own memories. Uh. Nicolas cars point was that
Speaker 1: he he felt he was losing This was very anecdotal,
Speaker 1: but he felt he was losing the ability to retain
Speaker 1: information that he couldn't even maintain focus on anything that
Speaker 1: took longer than a few minutes because the Internet had
Speaker 1: conditioned him, right, the web had conditioned him to accept
Speaker 1: information in in website like a web page sized amount
Speaker 1: and then that's it. You can't go more than that.
Speaker 1: So he couldn't read a book anymore. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's funny because that's that's one of the points that
Speaker 1: David Allen makes in his Getting Things Done is life
Speaker 1: can be very stressful if you have a lot of
Speaker 1: things to manage. So writing things down or recording them
Speaker 1: in some fashion it doesn't necessarily had to be written,
Speaker 1: UM is as a good way to take the stress
Speaker 1: off because once you have it written down in a
Speaker 1: place where you're going to go back and look you,
Speaker 1: you're less likely to forget to do that thing, to
Speaker 1: accomplish that thing. And that's just one of the points
Speaker 1: he made. It's one of many points he makes in
Speaker 1: the book. UM The important thing again to notice he
Speaker 1: suggests writing it down like on a paper planner is
Speaker 1: sort of where he started. He said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you have an electronic system that you prefer to use,
Speaker 1: but it's not the technology specific. It's not because we
Speaker 1: have Twitter and geotagging that we're giving away our privacy.
Speaker 1: It's what we're what we're doing with the technology as
Speaker 1: individuals and making our individual choices on what to do
Speaker 1: with that technology, no matter. I mean, could write your
Speaker 1: location down on a piece of paper and yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: copy it five times and give it out to people,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have the same reach as you would if
Speaker 1: you were doing this on the Internet, but you're still
Speaker 1: giving away important information about you. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's not the technology per se, it's what you're
Speaker 1: doing with it, and then what you're sharing with it.
Speaker 1: It matters. And and I really find cars point interesting
Speaker 1: and the idea that he thinks it's it's a scary
Speaker 1: thing to be to lose that ability to retain information,
Speaker 1: you know, because we essentially feel like we've offloaded that
Speaker 1: off our brains so we can free up our brains.
Speaker 1: We don't need to remember stuff because it's somewhere else.
Speaker 1: For example, I used to be able to rattle off
Speaker 1: the phone numbers of all of my close friends and
Speaker 1: my family members, and now I'm able to remember about
Speaker 1: four of them. Yes, because you have them in your
Speaker 1: smart exactly, They're all in my context list. I don't
Speaker 1: have to remember. I just go to the picture of
Speaker 1: the person, say, Hey, there's the dude I want to
Speaker 1: talk to, click on his picture, and there I go. Um, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: is something to his argument. What I thought was interesting
Speaker 1: is I read another point where this seems like, uh,
Speaker 1: it's almost the opposite. Take A fellow by the name
Speaker 1: of Kevin Slaven wrote an essay called the Ebb of Memory.
Speaker 1: This was part of a book called This Will Change
Speaker 1: Everything's a series of essays from various experts in various fields,
Speaker 1: kind of giving their take on what will change everything.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, several copies have been floating
Speaker 1: around the Yes. So Slavens point was that it was,
Speaker 1: like I said, kind of the opposite. He said that
Speaker 1: human memory, the fact that human memory degrades over time
Speaker 1: is a good thing. That that the typical person, they
Speaker 1: will experience something, they will remember it, and over time
Speaker 1: aspects of that memory will change. We will drop certain details,
Speaker 1: we may add certain things that did not happen into
Speaker 1: the memory, and we will misremember. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: why anecdotal evidence is not entirely uh, you know, reliable.
Speaker 1: It's why when you bring witnesses in court cases, especially
Speaker 1: for something that happened years and years ago, the testimonial
Speaker 1: uh evidence is sometimes less reliable than any physical evidence
Speaker 1: you found, right, because we don't remember things exactly the
Speaker 1: way they happen necessarily uh. And he says this is
Speaker 1: a good thing because if something tragic happens in our lives,
Speaker 1: over time, we are able to distance ourselves. We forget
Speaker 1: certain things. We don't feel that pain the same way
Speaker 1: when we think back as we did when it happened.
Speaker 1: There are people who have perfect memory, total recall, where
Speaker 1: they are able to remember every single thing that they've
Speaker 1: encountered with absolute clarity. And they explained they described their situation,
Speaker 1: their their their experiences as being just as raw as
Speaker 1: when it first happened. So the happiest moments of their lives,
Speaker 1: when they think on those moments, they experience those emotions
Speaker 1: as if it had just happen. Same thing with the
Speaker 1: most tragic things. And Slaven's point is that that is
Speaker 1: that is really a tough life. It is hard to
Speaker 1: live that life where you can think back on the
Speaker 1: things that happened that maybe you're ashamed of, or maybe
Speaker 1: something that just hurt your feelings, and to experience that
Speaker 1: all over again, it's really hard to live with that.
Speaker 1: His point was that by offloading all this on the web,
Speaker 1: we are preserving that information. All the information exists on
Speaker 1: computers or in the cloud, we can access it at
Speaker 1: any time. And then because information on computers and in
Speaker 1: the cloud does not change, it's not like computers forget things.
Speaker 1: We're going to see the details exactly as how we
Speaker 1: it we first put them in when we recorded them
Speaker 1: the first time. And so Slaven's argument was that that this,
Speaker 1: this this sharing that we're doing, this disregard of privacy,
Speaker 1: will ultimately mean that we will live as if we
Speaker 1: have perfect memories, and that as a result, we will
Speaker 1: always be endanger of feeling the highest of highs and
Speaker 1: the lowest of lows because we are not giving our
Speaker 1: memory the chance to incorporate these things into our experience
Speaker 1: and then just uh and and and evolve over time.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of fascinating too. And again it it
Speaker 1: relates back to geotagging, because we can now record the
Speaker 1: events of our lives on with a level of detail
Speaker 1: that is far beyond anything that anyone else has been
Speaker 1: able to do automatically, right, Like, I mean, you could
Speaker 1: have done it in the past, but it took more work.
Speaker 1: It took your work to do that. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: funny because one of the articles that I read in preparation,
Speaker 1: uh for the podcast was an older piece that Charlie
Speaker 1: Sorrel did for Wired. I mean this was this was
Speaker 1: really before there were automated systems. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: there were things that that you could do, but he
Speaker 1: was relying on the then new memory cards that had
Speaker 1: built in GPS system. UM. So he said, you know,
Speaker 1: basically that the the technology hadn't been made popular at
Speaker 1: that point to automatically geotag and send photos. UM. So
Speaker 1: it's still sort of a new thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: you could use if you could sync up the date
Speaker 1: or the time actually the time on your GPS receiver
Speaker 1: and your your camera. If you have the timestamp, then
Speaker 1: it's you know, easy to sync up. As you were
Speaker 1: saying before, Um, you may not necessarily have the information stored. Uh,
Speaker 1: you may have to write it down, but at least
Speaker 1: you had some sort of record of doing that. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, so there there were ways to do that
Speaker 1: even before it became a popular technology to build right
Speaker 1: in of course those of us with smartphones. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been playing around with that since I got an
Speaker 1: Android found myself. UM and it's uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: so much easier now to automatically do it. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think that that can be the problem if you're
Speaker 1: somebody who wants to do it sometimes but not other times.
Speaker 1: If you just leave it enabled, you may inadvertently uh
Speaker 1: save information, or if you leave it off all the time,
Speaker 1: you may wish you had done it later, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should point out that. You know, I talked
Speaker 1: to a lot about the services that automatically incorporate the
Speaker 1: meta data into them. You don't even if you aren't
Speaker 1: using a service that does that. If there, if the
Speaker 1: metadata is there, it is possible to see it. It
Speaker 1: just means that the person who's looking at the photo
Speaker 1: has to open it in an application that will show
Speaker 1: that metadata. So a lot of photo editors do it.
Speaker 1: Even photo viewers in the more recent operating systems will
Speaker 1: let you see that. If you have an older operating system,
Speaker 1: like I don't know people who are using certain computers
Speaker 1: for certain companies, um, you may not be able to
Speaker 1: see that metadata because the operating system came into being
Speaker 1: and the applications came into being before GPS metadata was
Speaker 1: included with photos popular, right, So you don't have that
Speaker 1: X that I found that out. I went through all
Speaker 1: of the programs I have where I can manipulate photos,
Speaker 1: and I tried to see which ones would let me
Speaker 1: see the meta data that included GPS location, which ones don't.
Speaker 1: I have one program on this computer that lets me
Speaker 1: see meta data. Well, it's definitely, it's definitely becoming more popular.
Speaker 1: Just about every editing software now. It's you know, designed
Speaker 1: for the consumer um and if you're using really high
Speaker 1: end stuff, well they may include it, but it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily something that you know, even things like Windows Picture
Speaker 1: Viewer and in the more recent operating systems you can
Speaker 1: find the meta data there and I Photo for the
Speaker 1: Mac with its know it's got features, right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, if you have a newer machine, if you
Speaker 1: have like Windows seven or I believe even Windows Vista, UM,
Speaker 1: you would be able to view this information pretty simply
Speaker 1: just by looking at the properties and looking for that
Speaker 1: that location data might be in longitude and latitude. But
Speaker 1: all you have to do there is copy and paste
Speaker 1: it into a program like just like Google Maps, and
Speaker 1: that'll that'll show you exactly where that location is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean it's a really interesting technology. It
Speaker 1: has a lot of legitimate uses, a lot of fun uses. Sure,
Speaker 1: they're just just like any other tool. There are good
Speaker 1: ways to use it and bad ways to use it,
Speaker 1: and you should be aware of both before you just
Speaker 1: go out there and start clicking pictures of everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that was a good discussion, and I apologize for
Speaker 1: getting very philosophical towards the end of it, but I
Speaker 1: just felt that that was one of those things that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really interesting to me and I wanted
Speaker 1: to dive into it. And again, it's it's like anything else.
Speaker 1: There are good points and bad points to to recording
Speaker 1: that information. Yep, yep, yep. So, if you guys have
Speaker 1: any stories you want to share or any thoughts about
Speaker 1: privacy and the web and what its role is. Do
Speaker 1: you think privacy is a thing of the past. Do
Speaker 1: you think we're actually going to get to a point
Speaker 1: where we will all, either by choice or perhaps by force,
Speaker 1: no longer have privacy? Let's know. You can let's know
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Facebook the handle there is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W, or you can shoot us an email. That
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at how stuffworks dot com and
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk to you again soon. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
Speaker 1: of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
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