Your online photos could lead thieves to your front door. Stop them now!

 

  Social networking sites make it easy to upload digital pictures. It’s simple. Afterward, part of the fun is reading the reactions of your friends. Unfortunately, scammers and would-be thieves are also finding opportunities via your photos.

How? Meet the Geo-Tag. Geo-Tags add geographical identification to various media such as video, SMS messages and websites but are more commonly used for Photographs. These bits of information are embedded in digital photos and tell someone where a picture was taken by providing latitude and longitude coordinates, they can also include altitude and bearing. As usual, the criminal sorts have found a way to exploit this seemingly innocent info.

Combined with photo time and date stamps, criminals can use geo-tags to find out where you live and what your daily patterns are. If your photos also reveal particularly gorgeous jewelry or stereo equipment worthy of an 80’s glam-rock band, the bad guys can use that information to, as they say, relieve you of your valuables.

Are you just supposed to stop posting your pics? Take up an Amish lifestyle? Go crawl under a rock? The answers are no, of course not, and only if you really want to.

 

Double-click to defeat the bad guys

 

With a few simple tools, you can continue sharing your holiday photos with friends and family and stay safe in the process.

The main trick is to delete geo-tags from your photos before you upload them. iPhone users can install an app called deGeo. For those of you using an Android phone, Geo-Eraser eliminates location marks from your digital photos.

If your phone is equipped with GPS, it places location data in the meta tags of your digital photos. So, the same problem applies. In this situation, a program called JPEG and PNG Stripper can clear your photos of this information.

X-Pire is yet another tool you can use to protect yourself. X-Pire allows you to place an expiration date on your photos. That way, you can feel free to post your pics where you want. When their time is up, they automatically disappear from your posting while leaving your original untouched.

Of course, a little awareness goes a long way. Consider your audience before you post. If you’re receiving comments from unknown people, you may need to bump up your safety settings online. This is very simple to do on social sites such as Facebook. Doing so will hide your information and protect you from criminal types.

Let’s say you’ve handled all this, but maybe you need a way to make sure your photos don’t go missing. Here are a few ideas to help you keep your digital pics from growing legs and running off to join the circus.

 

How to keep “Oops!” away from your precious digital pics

If you’re like most people, your digital pictures pile up on your computer’s hard drive. While this isn’t a problem in itself, it leaves you open to problems when your computer crashes. For those of us all too familiar with the blue screen of panic (and swearing), a few simple tactics can keep your prized photos safe and protect your household from a few choice words.

What to do? Make copies and save them in a number of different places, both at home and online. The more important your pics are, the more strategic you should try to be about making backups. Of course, this advice goes for anything you cannot replace.

Ensure that all your valuable photos are well backed up. Norton 360 automatically makes local backups onto an external hard drive. In addition, it also protects your computer from viruses and other threats.

However, having all your backups in one location won’t protect them in the event of a theft, fire or major earthquake. To fully secure your photos, you should also back them up online, using an online backup service such as Norton Online Backup. This is a great fall-back if you don’t have the Norton 360.

You should also consider copying your photos to blank DVDs and CDs (CD-R). Before you do, however, you should know that DVDs compress more information than CDs do. Smudges and imperfections can have a stronger effect on your ability to retrieve your photos from the disk. In this case, CDs are a better choice. Whatever you use, be sure to store them upright and safely away from heat and direct sunlight. Also, be sure to use CD-Rs rather than rewritable CD-RWs to avoid accidentally writing over your photos.

So, today’s takeaway is that when it comes to photos, you should take steps to protect them and protect yourself. With a few key programs, you can keep your pictures and your property safe.

 

Safety tips provided by Norton  (thanks Norton!)

 

Norton 360
Norton Online Backup