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by Jeff James The EXIF (exchangeable image file format) provides a wealth of information about digital photographs, including where and when the photo was taken. While EXIF data raises security and privacy issues when used improperly, mass media reports have overblown the risk. Facebook strips most EXIF data from photographs when they are uploaded to Facebook. Over the last decade or so, the ability of cameras and smartphones to record additional data about digital photos using the EXIF (exchangeable image file format) standard has been a boon for photographers and users of mapping applications. EXIF stores all sorts of information about the picture you take, including shutter speed, ISO speed, aperture, and also the date, time, and -- if the device taking the photo has a GPS receiver -- location details about where the image was taken.You can view most of this information in Windows 7 by right-clicking on a digital photo in Windows Explorer, selecting properties, and then clicking on the details tab. (See screenshot below.) For even more detailed EXIF data information, you can use a web service like Jeffrey Friedl's online EXIF viewer, which allows you to upload digital photos and see an eye-opening amount of information about what EXIF data your images contain. EXIF provides a wealth of data for photography and image buffs, but also raises some serious privacy and security concerns. If you're working with confidential subject matter, or taking pictures of your own children, providing complete strangers with the exact details of where and when you took your pictures is something you'd want to avoid. Over the past few years a variety of mass media outlets have reported on the dangers of location information stored in EXIF data, yet many get the information wrong, particularly when it comes to how social media platforms like Facebook treat EXIF information on uploaded images. When you upload a photo to Facebook, the EXIF data is stripped from the image when it is uploaded. You can test this yourself: Take a photo with a smartphone (with GPS and location services enabled), then use the aforementioned online EXIF viewer to see all the data from the EXIF data recorded for the image. Upload that same image to Facebook, then download the image from Facebook by clicking on the "download" link underneath the picture. Load the downloaded copy of the image into the same image viewer and compare the data you see. There's a huge difference: The image that has been uploaded to Facebook, processed by Facebook, and then downloaded again only contains a fraction of the information that the original image did. You can see the changes clearly in a sample photo I took with my iPhone 4S just outside our editorial offices in Fort Collins, CO earlier this year. I've posted "before" and "after" pictures in the photo gallery embedded below. 1 / 2 Fullscreen Original image Here's the original photo taken with an iPhone 4S prior to uploading to Facebook. All the EXIF data is present, including location and date/time information. Original image Here's the original photo taken with an iPhone 4S prior to uploading to Facebook. All the EXIF data is present, including location and date/time information. I reached out to Facebook for additional details about how they handle EXIF image data, and received this somewhat nebulous reply from a Facebook spokesperson. "We make limited use of camera EXIF/IPTC data. EXIF rotation information is no longer ignored. Photo comments are automatically populated with the IPTC title and caption," the spokesperson said. "We're looking into more deeply integrating other EXIF/IPTC data into the product, but want to do so in a way that's reliable and respects the privacy of people on Facebook." So in the interest of separating fact from fiction, photos taken with a smartphone and uploaded to Facebook won't retain EXIF data, so that's currently not a privacy concern. (Although Facebook's response to my query opens up the possibility that EXIF data will be used more significantly in the future.) A more realistic issue is over how Facebook handles access to the images you've uploaded, with recent news about glitches in Facebook's photo handling process allowing private images to be exposed to people you don't intend to share them with, such as Mark Zuckerberg's own private photos. So what's the best way to handle Facebook security and privacy concerns? Keeping abreast of all the latest news and updates from the Facebook privacy center is a good start, as well as keeping up on all the latest Facebook news and analysis from independent sources like this blog.

Enterprise Networking: Samsung Galaxy Nexus Teardown Shows Tidy 'Ice Cream Sandwich' Smartphone Next to Apple's iPhone 4S, Samsung's Galaxy Nexus is sure to be one of the hot holidays sellers in the United States when it goes on sale from Verizon Wireless, possibly as soon as Dec. 8. The Galaxy Nexus, the GSM version which launched in the U.K., has the distinction of being the first smartphone in the market to run Google's vaunted new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system. The new platform offers software navigation keys in place of physical buttons, facial unlock capabilities and Android Beam, a near field communications (NFC) utility that lets ICS phone owners tap devices together to share content. Of course, with the new OS and hardware, some folks might be curious as to how the phone is constructed. That's where the crafty guys at iFixit come in. Check out their process for dismantling the Galaxy Nexus in this slide show:

I'm sorry to hear about your friend. Those are great links, thank you. Here's one with a similar message that's a bit more fun: http://www.asse.org/zombieproject/

You learn something new each and every day!

I agree with both parts.

All hail Berlin!

Is this one of those things you're supposed to ask a lady about in advance, or is it OK to surprise her?

RG, are these rulers for measuring "packages" or measuring fish, or does it work equally well with both? :)

Way to go LD!

It may just be something that should be chalked up to urban legend, but I heard of one lady in her eighties who resides in, and works in, a retirement home. Her clients don't have to travel far and there are always plenty of walker parking spots available. Age is just a number - do what you love, and love what you do, and do it for as long as you want.

Happy birthday!

Het kids, do you know what today is?

Cograts Carley!!!!