Location Services bug, or unexpected feature.

[Velociraptors]

There appears to be a little annoyance for the slightly paranoid among us, in the iPhone's camera.

With location services turned off, some photos (but not all) still contain GPS info about the location they were taken. I noticed I had a bunch of photos on flickr that revealed the location of not just my house, but the room the photo was taken in - others were a block or two away - they were taken at a time I had location services turned on, so I counted it as an oops and deleted them.

Now, I don't mind GPS tagging, and I find it useful on plenty of images, but it just unnerves me some to have the addresses of myself & family revealed like that - so I turned location services off. Unfortunately there are still some photos being tagged with my location - me letting images slip through with locations is one thing, but not knowing the tags had been added in the first place is a little worse!

I've noted to a few friends who also had their home addresses revealed (and who'd had stalkers in the past or present) that this happened, and they too turned off their location services - the odd one or two of their very recently taken photos posted online still contain their exact location. Again not all, just some.

If you want to peek at the info contained in your iPhone photos, load them into Preview, hit Command-I, open the (i) tab and click GPS. In there is a "Locate" button to take you to the location in google maps - Google maps helpfully converts it to a street address when it can!

[half goon half god]

Wow. I just tried that myself and you're right. Hit locate, and Google gives you a street address!

My GPS location seems to be wrong, however. It has the right region, but it's well away from where I actually am. That's a slight relief.

[ClockWork]

Don't know if this is related - I don't have an iPhone - and I'm still hip and amazingly cool an' stuff - but if I want to map a location, I'll seek it out on Google Earth and then hit the link to Google Maps, and then print it out.

However, soooo many times, these maps are just plain wrong.
They show me roads that connect to other roads when in reality, they're dead ends and have no association with the streets google maps claim they connect to, and often branching streets don't even freaking exist.

Are they drawing info from older maps - or are they sort of simplifying a street directory - or is the technology just plain wrong?

(If I key in my address, it's a block away).

[decryption]

Don't know if this is related - I don't have an iPhone - and I'm still hip and amazingly cool an' stuff - but if I want to map a location, I'll seek it out on Google Earth and then hit the link to Google Maps, and then print it out.

However, soooo many times, these maps are just plain wrong.
They show me roads that connect to other roads when in reality, they're dead ends and have no association with the streets google maps claim they connect to, and often branching streets don't even freaking exist.

Are they drawing info from older maps - or are they sort of simplifying a street directory - or is the technology just plain wrong?

(If I key in my address, it's a block away).

They use maps that aren't really local. They might just buy a bunch of maps from a non-Australian mapping company who don't give a rats about Australia. It happens all the time in the GPS navigation space. Only devices using Whereis/Sensis maps are any good - or the old fashioned Melways/Ausways maps - which are excellent.

Google's maps are great in the way they are so easy to use and integrated into everything, and 90% of the time they're correct, but they're probably shoddiest maps in terms of local features, landmarks and points of interest.

It's like MP3 music I guess - it's lower quality, but the convenience makes it worth it.

[The_Hawk]

I have just checked a few of mine uploaded to various places and it seems like it depends on what you use to upload them. Thing directly form the iPhone seem to have kept their details, things that have gone through Flock (and been resized locally by Flock) seem to have all details stripped.

It would be very nice if the likes of Photobucket/Flickr etc etc would add an option at the account level to automatically strip all (or selected) image info. I'm seeing a bunch of tick boxes in the settings...

I figure many of them are re-sizing or doing something, it couldn't be that hard could it? Plan B would be an uploader for these services (I'm looking at you, makers of Flock) to integrate the stripping features (if they don't already).

[bok]

Google's maps are great in the way they are so easy to use and integrated into everything, and 90% of the time they're correct, but they're probably shoddiest maps in terms of local features, landmarks and points of interest.

OT but you can expect that to change. In attempting to jettison the original map makers (Google used to buy map data from TeleAtlas/Navtec/Sensis - the same place your TomTom gets its data from) Google are now updating maps and collating data themselves, probably using the street view cars.

-bok

[Donnie Darko]

Hey, did some searching for you and theres an iPhone app to strip exif / geotag data from the camera roll

App Shopper: Geotag Editor (Utilities)

""Geotag Editor" enables you to edit the location data (geotag) of the photos in camera roll.
(Light verion of viewer app "Photo Album" )

[Map Display/Modification/Deletion Function]
- Map display and modification can be performed for the location information (geotag) recorded in the photograph.
- Location information can be added to photographs taken using non-standard cameras.
- You can remove geo-tag from the photo.
※Geotag: Location data included in Exif of Jpeg image"

[ClockWork]

It's like MP3 music I guess - it's lower quality, but the convenience makes it worth it.

Ah.
So Australia still is 'some place' somewhere.
"Here's 5 cents. Happy Birthday."
"Gee thanks! A whole coin!"

[Velociraptors]

A restore seems to have fixed it, this time . I ran about testing photos with services turned off - anywhere from 1 in 3 to 1 in 20 photos were still tagged with correct GPS-obtained coordinates. Post-restore, none in 40 .

[The_Hawk]

A restore seems to have fixed it, this time . I ran about testing photos with services turned off - anywhere from 1 in 3 to 1 in 20 photos were still tagged with correct GPS-obtained coordinates. Post-restore, none in 40 .

Still, many people use location services for other things and want to leave it on. Hell for my own use I would like all photo's (including those taken on all my other cameras) to be geo tagged, just not so keen on having that information available to everyone else.

Mind you I suppose it's one of those things I would like to have a clear option for. Consider the happy snaps at the beach or the holiday shots you might want to keep the info since others could find it relevant yet it's of no concern to you that it's shared. But shots of the kids birthday party at home would be a different story.

To be fair, this sort of issue has only come about in recent times with camera's with a built in GPS (or should I say "Smart" phones), but this is the sort of thing I see as becoming more and more standard in cameras of all sorts.