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How many of you have been tempted to send a naked photo online to someone you just met in an online dating service? How many of you have done it already? Even if your face isn’t shown and it’s just a picture of a particular body part, there’s no way they can tell who you are, right?
You may be surprised to learn that there are fairly sophisticated tools and techniques out there on the internet that can enable anyone who has a copy of your “naughty photo” to find out not only your first and last name but where you live and all sorts of personal information about you.
The purpose of this post is to make you think twice prior to sending out revealing or naughty photos of yourself over the internet. Sending naked photos out over the internet is just like walking down the street, handing a piece of paper with your first and last name to random strangers. Probably not the smartest thing to do….
Here are 3 techniques that can be used to find out personal information about you from analyzing your naked photo:
For every picture taken, a digital camera (or cell phone) stores a text file of a tiny amount of readable data inside the photo. This data is called “Exif Data”. The purpose of the data is to record the exposure, focal length and other photographic-related information. Professional photographers use this information to post edit the photo and make necessary corrections to ensure the best quality picture is taken. Some digital cameras now store geo-targeting and other personal data on the exif. By looking at the exif data, you can tell the latitude and longitude and copying down those coordinates into Google Maps can provide you with an exact location of where the photo was taken. This applies mostly to cell phones as most phones nowadays (with cameras) have a gps device installed. Some digital cameras (and cell phones) go one step further and even provide the first and last name of the owner. There are many websites out there that will freely analyze a photo and provide exif data.
I did a Google search with safe mode turned off (not recommended) for a picture of a womans breasts. I quickly found an amateur picture that was posted online and picked up by Google Images. I then took that photo and viewed the exif data and the first and last name of that woman was there in plain view. (I deleted the picture and data after wards).
If that alone doesn’t scare you from sending out your naked photos, keep reading….
Google has a complete map of the entire internet. Going back to the above example, it took me about 2 seconds to find a personal photo of a random woman’s breasts using the Google Images search function. I don’t know that particular details of that photo, but it is safe to say that someone, somewhere posted the picture of her breasts online and Google immediately picked it up.
Google has been unsuccessfully sued in the past for listing personal details like this, so don’t think you can send a nasty worded email to the powers that be at Google to remove your naughty photo. It doesn’t work like that.
Even if you don’t personally post that nude photo online, the guy or gal you sent it to via email can. There are several websites out there dedicated to “Ex girlfriend photos”. Even giving naughty images to someone you are currently dating can cause problems down the road.
Let’s say that the exif data on the naughty photo you sent was farily clean and no personable identifiable information was able to be seen. Did you send a picture of your face to that person? Nothing more than a picture of your smiling face. There is website out there called “Tin Eye” and it is a reverse image search engine. This means that someone can upload that same exact photo of your face and immediately be presented with all the websites out there on the internet that the image is on, including Facebook. From there it’s a matter of connecting the dots.
Boom, headshot.
I have discussed 3 techniques, but rest assured there are many more underhanded techniques strangers can use to get your information. Of course I’m not going to list them here, but it’s suffice to say that if you have a Facebook/Myspace/You Tube or other online account, it isn’t that hard to get your personal information.
Should you worry if you have already sent out nude photos in the past?
Yes, your photos could plausibly be out there on some pervert website, or the person whom you sent them to could have passed them along to his friends.
Although…
As a 34 year old guy who has been a member of almost every single online dating service out there over the past 10 years, I have seen my fair share of naughty photos from women I was dating/talking to. Have I saved any of those photos? No. I go through (on average) 1 laptop every 6 months (I tend to not take care of my electronics) and every time I get a new computer, I perform a complete hard drive wipe, then I take the hard drive out of the computer and manually destroy it into little pieces. This is only done to protect my personal data.
Let’s hear your stories. Have you ever sent out nude photos to people you have met on an online dating service? Has it ever come back to haunt you?