Most cat owners enjoy taking pictures of their feline friends but did you know that you could be compromising your privacy by doing so?
I recently came across a site that I wanted to share with you that indexes cat pictures by location provided by the geo-tagging facility on a sharer's phone.
Owen Mundy, a professor at Florida State University created the site with pictures shared on social networks with the hashtag #cat and with the aid of a supercomputer and satellite imagery has compiled the geographical data of around a million cats!
Personally, I didn't find the site that user-friendly and failed to home in on feline friends that I know have had pictures shared on social media and tagged. There are however random pictures of people's cats in their local area at street level. On the site itself Mundy has written:
"This project explores two uses of the Internet: the sociable and humorous appreciation of domesticated felines and the status quo of personal data usage by startups and international megacorps who are riding the wave of decreased privacy for all."
Although no exact addresses are revealed, I felt that cat owners may be interested in knowing how their data can be used on social media if photos are geo-tagged.
I'm no technical wizard but I am fairly reliably informed that if you disable the geo-tagging facility on your device this will protect your privacy. Cat lovers with an iPhone can disable their location by going to 'settings' then 'privacy' then 'location services' and turning that off on the camera and various apps.
Visit the site here and take a look yourself and check out the about page there too...interesting!