How to Read a Photos Upload Location
Modernistic smartphones (and many digital cameras) embed GPS coordinates in each photo they take. Yes, those photos yous're taking accept location information embedded in them—at to the lowest degree past default. You may want to hide this information when sharing sensitive photos online.
Find the GPS Coordinates
RELATED: How to Remove The Hidden Personal Information Microsoft Office Adds to Your Documents
GPS coordinates are stored every bit "metadata" embedded in the photo files themselves. All you have to do is view the file's properties and expect for it. It's a bit like the potentially incriminating information that can exist stored forth with Microsoft Office documents or PDF files.
In Windows, all you take to do is right-click a picture file, select "Properties," and so click the "Details" tab in the properties window. Look for the Breadth and Longitude coordinates under GPS.
In macOS, right-click the prototype file (or Control+click information technology), and select "Get Info." Yous'll see the Latitude and Longitude coordinates under the "More Info" section.
Sure, you may exist able to see this information with an "EXIF viewer" awarding, but most operating systems have this feature built in.
GPS coordinates are not embedded in every single photograph. The person who took the photo may have disabled this feature on their phone or manually removed the EXIF details afterwards. Many image-sharing services online—but not all of them—automatically strip the geolocation details for privacy reasons. If you don't see these details, the've been stripped from (or never included in) the image file.
Friction match the Coordinates to a Location on a Map
These are standard GPS coordinates, so yous only need to friction match them to a location on a map to observe where the photograph was really taken. Many mapping services offer this feature—you can plug the coordinates straight into Google Maps, for example. Google offers instructions for properly formatting the coordinates for Google Maps.
Bear in mind that this is but metadata and could be faked, just information technology'due south pretty rare that someone would bother to fake metadata instead of stripping it entirely. It's also possible for the GPS location to be off a bit. A phone or digital camera may just have been using its last known location if it couldn't get an up-to-date GPS signal while taking the photo.
How to Stop Embedding GPS Coordinates in Your Photos
RELATED: What Is EXIF Data, and How Tin can I Remove It From My Photos?
If you desire to disable adding GPS data entirely, you can go into your phone's Camera app and disable the location setting. You tin also remove the embedded EXIF data before sharing potentially sensitive photos. Tools are congenital directly into Windows, Mac Bone X, and other operating systems for this—but follow our guide for more than details.
RELATED: iOS Has App Permissions, Too: And They're Arguably Better Than Android'south
On an iPhone, caput to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > Camera, and then select "Never" for the "Allow Location Access" option. The Camera app won't have admission to your location and won't be able to embed information technology in photos.
On Android, this process varies from telephone to phone. Dissimilar manufacturers include their own custom Camera apps, and even the Android four.4 Photographic camera app works differently than in Android v.0. Dig effectually your camera app's quick settings toggles or settings screen and await for an option that disables this feature—or just perform a quick web search to find out how to disable it on your phone and its camera app.
Conduct in mind, though, that GPS coordinates tin can be really useful, too. For example, with a service similar Google Photos, Yahoo! Flickr, or Apple iCloud Photo Library, you can organize your photos and view them co-ordinate to where they were taken, making it really easy to browse photos taken on a particular vacation or at a favorite landmark. You lot can ever strip out the location information on your own if you lot want to share a photograph—that'south why so many services automatically remove the geolocation details when you share the photo with someone else.
The EXIF metadata stored forth with photos besides includes some other details. For case, you lot tin encounter exactly which model of camera (or smartphone) the person used to take the photo. Y'all can also examine exposure settings and other details. Almost of these details aren't considered anywhere near as sensitive equally GPS location details—although professional person photographers may want to keep their tricks and settings secret.
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/211427/how-to-see-exactly-where-a-photo-was-taken-and-keep-your-location-private/