Security Warning: Using a mobile phone to take pictures of kids activities/work

Security Warning: Using a mobile phone to take pictures of kids activities/work

Date: 2010.07.08 | Category: android, ICT, primary, Primary School, Primary School ICT

Did you know when you take a picture on your mobile phone it may add your current location to the Exif data of the image?

So if you are out on a school trip and have GPS or location enabled on your device then you upload an image to an e-portfolio or blog anyone will be able to see the latitude and longitude of where you took the picture.

I discovered this when working on Classdroid and Kudos to Hak5 for the useful link. Safe to say all images uploaded from Classdroid will set the location as: “The moon”.

This is especially a concern if you out doing school trips and updating your blog on the fly.

How to turn off location tagging. On Android, Click Settings then Locations then un-tick My Location.

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http://suklaa.org kristian

Good point, John.

Turn off location on the iPhone:
Settings / General / Location Services
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http://www.oliverquinlan.com/blog/ Oliver Quinlan

Is this always a problem? Obviously there will be specific circumstances for specific children where you will have to be very careful with this, but couldn’t the location data be used in an interesting way to enhance the learning? What inherently wrong with tagging school trip photos witness the location of the trip? As long as staff know this is happening, and how to prevent it in the specific circumstances when it poses a risk, I think this could be really interesting.

Seems a shame to curb the potential of something just because of a few risks. Shouldn’t we manage the risks rather than bury them?
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http://mclear.co.uk John McLear

This is not always a problem. I completely agree we should manage the risks. The reason I did this blog post was to notify people of the potential risk and how to manage that risk. I love location based stuff and openness of information but nearly everyone I have spoken to was not aware of this issue. Even I wasn’t and I’m writing software that works with mobile + images… It is an issue that should be discussed in an open and transparent environment and maybe covered as part of e-safety?
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