![]() Its much less secure Messenger and Instagram platforms are not recommended for anything private or sensitive. It’s this kind of shadowy collection and processing of metadata under the guise of broadly worded privacy policies that worries security advocates over Facebook’s stewardship of WhatsApp. “Metadata, data about your data,” says Cyjax CISO Ian Thornton-Trump, “is almost as powerful as the actual data.” Given that most of my photos are taken on my phone, as soon as I upload one to Facebook or Instagram, the company can track my movements and mine location patterns to derive intelligence about my behaviors. As a user I have been lulled into a false sense of security by disabling location access-Facebook knows I have done this but saves my location data anyway. So now we know that despite being told not to track my iPhone location, Facebook has harvested, stored and processed my location from a photo taken on my phone, adding it to the other datapoints it collects on me from countless websites and apps. ![]() When you upload a photo with all its interesting and useful metadata, it seems Facebook don’t want to delete this convenient information as it adds to their growing data on us.” Facebook tracks almost everything you do both while you’re on Facebook as well as when you’re browsing elsewhere to help feed its impressive advertising algorithms. Why else would Facebook want this data?ĮSET’s Jake Moore warns that “users must remember that Facebook’s whole business model is based on mass data collection and being a free to use network-they will collect as much as (and where) they possibly can. The company can infer all kinds of intelligence from the time and place, the IP address, the phone used, and even the subject matter of the photograph: Where I am, what I’m likely doing, even who I’m with. That information has been collected by Facebook and can be mined at will. This is your metadata, and it includes the stripped location tags as well as your IP address. You should also have an “album” folder which contains a list of html files. For each of your albums, you will have a folder containing your photos. Once the file is created, you can download it. Then under Settings and Privacy-Settings, select “Your Facebook Information.” Select “Photos and Videos” and hit “Create File.” Unhelpfully, Facebook’s date limiting range can skew results and may return empty folders. You can see this for yourself, although it’s somewhat laborious and there could be lots of data. Facebook has harvested and stored the photo’s precise location data. Creation time of download in PT, not GMT Facebook / iOS Location data stripped by Facebook has been harvested. You don’t need to share it publicly-as long as it has been stored in your Facebook album, it’s fine. Next, upload the photo to Facebook using your app. You should see your location on a map-now you know the EXIF has been captured in the image file. Ensure that the Facebook location option is “Never.” Take a photo with your iPhone, go to your camera roll, open the photo and swipe up. But Facebook still uses this hidden EXIF workaround and it’s your data that is being taken, with most of you not realising it’s being done. This shuts down the Facebook app’s access to the location derived from the iPhone itself when using the app or in background. Let’s be very clear here, in your iPhone’s “Location Services” settings, under “Privacy,” you can select to “never” allow Facebook access to your location. ![]() It is harvested, “collected and processed” to be added to the data treasure trove it holds on each of us. But that location metadata is not thrown away by Facebook-it is way too valuable.
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