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Your photos may be giving away personal information

GPS-equipped smartphones and digital cameras may have geotagging enabled, which can compromise your privacy.

Geotags add hidden data to your photos that usually consist of latitude and longitude coordinates. This hidden data can be easily extracted, and using a tool such as Google Maps, a user can pinpoint the exact location of the content of any given photograph. This has some disturbing implications for those who may have geotagging enabled and don't realize it. Suppose you have geotagging enabled on your camera and you take a picture of your child playing in front of your home. If you post that picture to a public website, you've just given the exact location of your child to any user who knows how to extract and view that hidden data.

Disabling the geotag function on your camera or smartphone may not be a simple operation. The website ICanStalkU.com provides step-by-step instructions for disabling the photo geotagging function on iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and Palm devices. Consult your digital camera's manual for instructions on disabling its geotagging function.

For more information, see the New York Times article "Web Photos That Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live."