Use of EXIF, IPTC and GPS information in JPEG as tracking cookie

[Phil Harvey]

I don't use facebook, but I imagine that they resize the images for web display.  Typically, when this happens, all metadata is deleted. I think older versions of Photoshop did this, but CS4 seems to erase EXIF and IPTC but preserve some XMP.

ExifTool reads all types of metadata, including IPTC and XMP.

- Phil

[joe]

So my interest is advertising and marketing networks using mobile apps that are using digital content, referring to photo,audio or video, but for sake of discussion will refer to it a 'MEDIA"  to add unauthorized tracking mechanism to that media. So since the exiftool catches dataadded to media, this foum looks to concentrate on photos, has anyone seen any such data being added. If so I would like to open the forum to chat about it, hows it done and to show proof of the activity.

So today I was doing a little research on watermarking data to media to use it for tracking users on apps. Ran across this info in an article:

"How does this work? The time of the digital photo is matched to the time of a GPS location. The coordinates of that GPS location are then linked (GeoTagged) to the photograph. These coordinates may be watermarked on the photo or used to position the photos in geospatial software such as ArcMap or Google Earth."
http://nctc.fws.gov/csp/oilspill/training/gps/GeoTagging/gps_photoLinking_and_terra_sync.pdf


So if anyone is interested in running some tests, doing some research, take a look at some of the top mobile apps that allow users to download/upload pix, ie path, hipster instagram to name a few.

1) Download the app

2) use one of your photos within your memory, run a test on it.

3) upload that photo to the app then examine the photo with exiftool

4) send the photo to facebook, since these apps have an interface, then re-examine the photo to see any changes.

5) NOW as for watermarking, besides what being added to the back of the picture as exif data, what tools can you  use to find invisible watermarking data on theface of the picture.

Appreciate anyone that's interested to join in to help with the analysis

thx
joe

Besides the exif data on the back to review, ie was gps added