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Tips on uploading photos for better privacy - 2/10/2016 5:07:43 AM

crumpets

Posts: 1614
Joined: 11/5/2014
From: South Bay (SF & Silicon Valley)
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I always like to help as many people as I can, so, when this question came into my mail today, I figured I'd sanitize the answer and post what I advised, so that others can benefit.

QUESTION:

quote:

Do you have any technical advice on how I can strip out the GPS data that may be attached to photos I upload to collarspace and collarchat? (I'm on a Mac.)

Here's my answer, but the answer will depend on the operating system, where I'm mostly on Linux, but I realize most of you are on Windows or Mac so I'll try to generalize the answers.

MY ANSWER:

quote:

This is a great question because one should ALWAYS strip out the EXIF information in pictures uploaded to any web site. Why give that web site so much about you, including, often, the GPS location of the photo, the chronology, the camera ID, etc.

Almost everyone on Linux uses ImageMagick freeware for batch manipulation of photos:

ImageMagick Description

I use it on Linux, where it easily strips out the EXIF from any number of photos at once:
$ for f in *.jpg; do convert -strip $f $f; done

But you're on the Mac.
Googling, I find you can install Imagemagick on the mac:

ImageMagick installer for Mac OS X

Install ImageMagicK on OSX Lion

How do I install Image::Magick on mac os x?
etc.

I'm sure there are plenty of others, but ImageMagick is extremely popular for batch manipulation of photos (resizing, orientation tags, generating thumbnails, etc.), so that's what I suggest for your batch programmatic image manipulations.

A quick Google finds that ImageMagick is also available on Windows:

How to install imagemagick on windows 7

ImageMagick Windows Installation

Installing ImageMagick on Windows XP

And for other platforms:

Install ImageMagick from Sourceforge

I realize there are MANY solutions to photo privacy, so consider this just one suggestion (which is the one "I" use most).

For all to benefit, users are encouraged to add their solutions to this thread on how to protect your privacy when uploading pictures to a web site.

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RE: Tips on uploading photos for better privacy - 3/1/2016 9:22:19 AM

crumpets

Posts: 1614
Joined: 11/5/2014
From: South Bay (SF & Silicon Valley)
Status: offline

Turns out that the admins purposefully broke the hotlinking between the collarspace & collarchat sites (perhaps with the cloudflare insertion?).

Anyway, if you want to place an image tag into a collarchat thread, you are now limited to either hotlinking a third-party site, or finding an anonymous image-hosting site (preferably one that works with Tor and sans any need for registration).

If you hotlink, you should keep the photos to fewer than 640 pixels wide (which is a pain in google image searches because the smallest non-exact size they allow you to filter on is "medium").

Sites that allow anonymous posting of images & that work with Tor exit nodes are:

http://tinypic.com

Please suggest more

Sites that allow anonymous posting of images but which won't work with Tor exit nodes but which do work with VPNs are:

http://imgur.com

https://www.anony.ws

Please suggest more

Sites that allow anonymous posting of arbitrary file types (I haven't tested this site though):

http://pastebin.com

Additional suggestions for sites that allow ANONYMOUS posting (and subsequent hotlinking) of photos are requested, so that all benefit from what you know.

NOTE: The reason for the Tor/VPN is patently obvious if/when you consider the nature of the types of images that we might be uploading for posting.

< Message edited by crumpets -- 3/1/2016 9:36:48 AM >

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RE: Tips on uploading photos for better privacy - 3/1/2016 10:57:49 AM

betataster

Posts: 138
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A word of caution to those that might not be familiar with these sorts of sites. After you upload your image to the anon.ws site, you will be offered embed links so you can then use your image elsewhere, which was the point of uploading it there in the first place. Do not, under any circumstances, accept the default link of a "viewer". I did not look at it and I have no idea what it is, but it is probably at the minimum, adware, and there is little to prevent it from being malware. What I do like about the site, it is very simple to just get the direct link to the image. It is the very next selection in the dropdown. So just grab the direct link to a JPEG and paste that wherever you needed using the appropriate syntax.

Hmm, the [noparse] tag seems to be disabled in this implementation.

As regards size, I do everything on an Android phone and I use a resize app appropriately named Photo Resizer. One advantage of that is that I'm uploading a much smaller file than if I was resizing online. Another very important reason for using an app on my phone, is that the resizing apps strips out potentially identifying metadata (up to and including GPS location, how precise I don't know) from the photograph. I do not know if the upload site does that though I would hope it does.

Edit: I just satisfied my curiosity as to how accurate the GPS location on a photograph taken with my phone is. I opened up one in the Gallery app and hit show on map and it went to Google Maps. The location was my city, my street, my property, my house, the room I took the photograph in, with an error of about 5 feet and drifting a bit. So be careful out there, folks. I'm going to see if I can disable metadata in the camera settings but you're protected well enough by using some app to strip it out.

< Message edited by betataster -- 3/1/2016 11:12:21 AM >

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RE: Tips on uploading photos for better privacy - 3/1/2016 12:05:19 PM

crumpets

Posts: 1614
Joined: 11/5/2014
From: South Bay (SF & Silicon Valley)
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quote:

ORIGINAL: betataster
Do not, under any circumstances, accept the default link of a "viewer".

Thank you for pointing that detail out, as I had assumed folks would know to first view the picture, and then copy the image URL.

Basically, if the image URL doesn't end with one of the standard filename extensions for images (e.g., gif or jpg or png, etc.), then don't use it as a URL.

Even so, some URLs still won't work for Tor users (but they can be presumed to know how to handle that anomaly).

quote:

ORIGINAL: betataster
resizing ... I do not know if the upload site does that though I would hope it does.

Size is often a problem.
I know that imgur and tinypic do not resize for you so you're better off resizing on your own.

On windows, the "irfanview" freeware program is, by far, the best and fastest and most well known:

http://www.irfanview.com

quote:

ORIGINAL: betataster
I'm going to see if I can disable metadata in the camera settings but you're protected well enough by using some app to strip it out.

That's another very good point which is that you want to STRIP out meta data from ANY photo uploaded.

The EASIEST way to do that is to simply convert the photo from a JPEG (which contains EXIF data) to something that doesn't contain EXIF data (such as a GIF).
There are PLENTY of other ways, but that's the easiest way (on Windows, Irfanview will save as a GIF).

< Message edited by crumpets -- 3/1/2016 12:09:06 PM >

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RE: Tips on uploading photos for better privacy - 3/8/2016 11:09:58 AM

crumpets

Posts: 1614
Joined: 11/5/2014
From: South Bay (SF & Silicon Valley)
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I was on Tor today and the exit node was blocked even by tinypic, so, I had to look for more free no-registration upload sites to post a picture.

Wikipedia on Photo Sharing Sites

For others to benefit (as always), here are additional no-registration sites that I tested to work with the Tor Browser Bundle:

http://imgup.net/

http://cubeupload.com/

http://share.pho.to/

http://www.imagetitan.com/

http://www.ephotobay.com/

http://screenshot.net/

http://imagevup.com/

http://www.swiftpic.org/

http://www.use.com/

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/

And, here are some that didn't work with the TBB but which should work with a normal browser on VPN:

http://postimage.org/

https://imgsafe.org/

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RE: Tips on uploading photos for better privacy - 3/12/2016 8:05:31 AM

crumpets

Posts: 1614
Joined: 11/5/2014
From: South Bay (SF & Silicon Valley)
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Just fyi...

If you just want to quickly send yourself a picture, you can enter this type of pre-prepared link (e.g., in a bookmark):
http://www.collarspace.com/personals/user/crumpets/sd/1/write.htm

If you want to just send yourself an email without attaching pictures, use a 0 instead of a 1 in that type of linke:
http://www.collarspace.com/personals/user/crumpets/sd/0/write.htm

That uploads the picture into your mail, where it will be saved for a year.