Just got an iPhone and it’s a great upgrade from my clunker LG device, but I’m worried about the photos I post having location information included. How can I turn off this feature? [ed note: it’s called “geotagging”]
You’re right to be concerned about privacy with photos taken on devices that know their location on Earth because by default they all add the exact latitude and longitude as part of what’s called the “EXIF” (pronounce that ‘ex-if’) information tucked into every photo you share.
If you think that it’s probably not very accurate, well, then you’re not paying attention. In fact, it’s startling how accurate things are now and how easy it is for software to even tell you the street address where a photo was taken. I know, I bumped into that just a few days ago with a panorama app I was testing at home. I created the panorama (a scrolling spherical view of my home interior) and posted it to their site, just to be startled that immediately below the photo it included not just my street address, but a map with “get directions”. Yikes!
On the other hand, this geotagging is pretty slick if you are on vacation because then your photo software can automatically organize your snapshots by location in addition to date and time. Backpacking through Europe? It’s a terrific feature.
But, of course, there’s that privacy thing.
So let’s start by tapping the capabilities of a very slick — and free — iPhone app called Koredoko to view a photo I took on a recent trip to Seattle:
As you can see, it identifies down to the exact street location where that photo was taken, even days after I returned back to Colorado. That’s because the geotag information is buried in the photo’s EXIF data.
To turn off geotagging is a bit tricky on the iPhone and iPad too, because it’s not where ya think it’d be located.
Go to “Settings” on your iOS7 device and swipe down to this view:
Logically, it should be in “Photos & Camera”, but if you look there, you’ll see a variety of things to modify, but no “geotagging” “geolocation” or similar:
Instead, you need to go back up to “Settings” (tap on the blue “Settings” on the top left of this view) and swipe up until you identify this set of options:
It’s the “Privacy” option you want here, just below Wallpapers & Brightness.
Tap on it.
Even here, “Photos” is not what you want. Try it, you’ll see that lets you control what other apps can look at your photo albums, nothing more.
Instead, tap on “Location Services”.
Ah, finally. To disable geotagging of the photographs or portraits you take on your iPhone or iPad (or any other iOS device), tap on the green slider switch adjacent to “Camera” and while it’ll complain, it’ll stop tagging the photos you take with your geographic latitude / longitude and that bit of your privacy will be restored.
Why Apple locates the control there and not somewhere more obvious is a bit puzzling to me, but perhaps the design team just assumes we are all perfectly fine sharing exactly where we are and what we’re doing all the time. Me? Not so much.
Hi,
In regard to your discussion, I would recommend a phone application that is quite useful for the purpose. I use an app named “GPS Privacy” that automatically deletes the GPS location tags if the photo is taken in a privacy area – like around your home, school, work, etc. This way you don’t have to remember whether you have the GPS tags on or off. Simply define your privacy areas, and your pictures won’t have GPS coordinates when made in these zones.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details…
Hope this would be helpful for you as well!
I’ve never had a guide tell you purposely to go to the wrong menu. I guess there’s a first for everything.
If I normally have my privacy (GPS Location) set to off, but leave the camera setting to on, am I correct in assuming that photos taken when GPS is off will not include location, but when I intentionally turn it on, they will?
That’s exactly how it should work “GDrive” but with an app like the one I demonstrate you can test it out and find out for sure.