Warning issued about camera phone pictures

It turns out for crooks and creeps, a picture is worth more than a thousand words.

Almost all smart phones and GPS enabled cameras come with a feature called "geotagging" A simple right click on many digital photos can reveal a lot more than you realize.

"Geotagging embeds the exact location of where that photo was taken within about 15 feet. That's pretty accurate," says tech expert Bill Stanton.

"So let's assume you are a thief or let's assume you want to stalk somebody, can you do it? And shockingly enough, we found out yes you can do it and it's actually pretty easy," says Gerald Friedland from the International Computer Science Institute.

A website called "I Can Stalk You" scans Twitter posts for pictures with geotags.

Privacy experts say you can turn off your device's ability to geotag, but keep in mind that might disable all of its GPS functions.

Copyright © 2024 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.