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Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
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Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#22It's a sad story and a fun-looking project but I think Google 100% did the right thing here. Most people have no idea how much information is included in photo metadata, and stripping it as much as possible lines up to how people expect the world to work.
If google really cared about privacy, they wouldn't have moved maps away from a subdomain. now if I want maps to have my location (logical), I need to grant google _search_ my location too.
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#23It's a sad story and a fun-looking project but I think Google 100% did the right thing here. Most people have no idea how much information is included in photo metadata, and stripping it as much as possible lines up to how people expect the world to work.
I agree with you. The next steps should be to disable the internet nationwide like North Korea. People have no idea how much bad things are there. Also I don't like fun things.
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#24> But it is just so tiresome that Google never consults their community. There was no advance notice of this change that I could find. Just a bunch of frustrated users in my inbox blaming me for breaking something.
I get it. This unequivocally sucks. It's a clear loss of functionality for a group of people who are educated about the advantages and disadvantages of embedded EXIF data. But I don't honestly think Google could have consulted their community. It's just too big. So when the author says:
> Because Google run an anticompetitive monopoly on their dominant mobile operating system.
I don't think the problem here is that Google is anticompetitive (though that's a problem in other areas). I think it's just too big that they can't possibly consult with any meaningful percentage of their 1 billion customers (or however many Android users are out there). They may also feel it's impossible to educate their users about the benefits and dangers of embedded location information (just thinking about myself personally, I'm certain that I'd struggle to convey they nuances of embedded location data to my parents).
I will note that Google Photos seems to happily let you add images to shared albums with embedded location information. I can't recall if you get any privacy-related warnings or notices.
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#25>So, can users transfer their photos via Bluetooth or QuickShare? .. Literally the only way to get a photo with geolocation intact is to plug in a USB cable
Bluetooth is not QuickShare, stop conflating them. Bluetooth works. I just tried it. It just sends the entire file to the destination, filename intact with all EXIF, no gimmicks, tricks, or extra toggles. As it has always done for 20+ years.
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#26Nice drunk theme! All web site should have one.
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#27Is location sharing something you can disable in iOS?
Yes. You can turn it off for Camera if you don't want the geotag to be included in the photo when taken. You can also, as part of the share media picker, opt to include or exclude location data on the photo.
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#28Similarly, the native Android photo picker strips the original filename. This causes daily customer support issues, where people keep asking the app developer why they're renaming their files. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/268079113 Status: Won't Fix (Intended Behavior).
Obviously an image picker shouldn't leak filenames... The filename is a property of the directory entry storing the file storing the image. The image picker only grants access to the image, not to directories, directory entries or files.
If you want filenames, you need to request access to a directory, not to an image
Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
#29This is the right move. https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11724#issuecomment-419... and adding a feature to browsers to explicitly use the info is the best solution really. The problem is that there was a change without a backup solution without making a native app, but preventing people from accidentally uploading their location in an image is the right move. It really needs to be more well known and handled automatically.