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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

#221

Post by adolph »

butlike wrote: post #46
lifis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The path is different than the filename though. If I want to find duplicates, it will be impossible if the filename changes. In my use case /User/user/Images/20240110/happy_birthday.jpg and /User/user/Desktop/happy_birthday.jpg are the same image.

> If I want to find duplicates, it will be impossible if the filename changes.

Depends on what is meant by a "duplicate." It would be a good idea to get a checksum of the file, which can detect exact data duplicates, but not something where metadata is removed or if the image was rescaled. Perceptual hashing is more expensive but is better distinguish matches between rescaled or cropped images.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing

Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

#222

Post by nullfield »

ryandrake wrote: post #207
ieie3366 wrote: post #4

Most likely: actually using the geolocation is an extremely niche usecase for images uploaded from mobile browsers. I’d wager 99.9% of the users didn’t realize that they are effectively sending their live GPS coords to a random website when taking a photo. But yes, a prop to the input tag ’includeLocation’ which would then give the user some popup confirmation prompt would have been nice

I'm gonna die on this hill, but silently attaching very sensitive PII (including exact lat/lon) to photos has always been a terrible anti-feature. One of those "WTF were they actually thinking?" terrible anti-features. Imagine if you created a word document and Microsoft silently attached your home address to them as metadata. Awful and totally unexpected to the vast majority of users.

As someone else mentioned it IS entirely problematic how advertisers/others abuse people, and I get WHY location gets stripped. I still think it's abusive to take away the user's choice.

(and why do they have to strip almost ALL EXIF data, instead of just location? [yes, yes, fingerprinting, but there are LOTS of iPhone {NUMBER} whatever out there])

It really just needs to be clearly communicated, opt-in at attach time. Probably with a severely hidden, developer-screen level, or BIG WARNING in security settings to totally disable stripping.

I assume most people won't want it, _usually_, so when adding photos just have it be a double-opt in - you have to both hit an extra button during attachment, then select "include location" or "include location and metadata", then a modal warning/confirmation.

Something like: "Confirm including photo location? This will permit the recipient to see where the pictures were taken. "

Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

#223

Post by ieie3366 »

isodev wrote: post #120
ieie3366 wrote: post #4

Most likely: actually using the geolocation is an extremely niche usecase for images uploaded from mobile browsers. I’d wager 99.9% of the users didn’t realize that they are effectively sending their live GPS coords to a random website when taking a photo. But yes, a prop to the input tag ’includeLocation’ which would then give the user some popup confirmation prompt would have been nice

> extremely niche usecase Phones are computers though, it’s not up to Google or Apple to decide what’s a good use case for my own pictures.

You are not the target audience :)

Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

#224

Post by Shalomboy »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #165
Shalomboy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first eye-opening moment working within the government was with team of herpetologists at the state conservation agency. They had a pretty slick public education campaign around protecting Gopher Tortoise habitats and a grand call-to-action "let the agency know where and when they see their nests". The whole thing fell apart because they were getting tons of earnestly-submitted junk data from earnestly-engaged cit…

Really? You don’t understand why people wouldn’t want to share their location with the government?

I was being facetious there, to be clear. my bad.

Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

#225

Post by amazingamazing »

bornfreddy wrote: post #204
amazingamazing wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re saying moving on from Google is similar to switching government?

Have you tried moving on from Google, and preferably not to Apple?

Yes, it’s trivial. What are you having difficulty with? There are plenty of threads here on HN about this

Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

#226

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

kristopolous wrote: post #209
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no one who knows how to change an engine should drive a car. This is why geeks make horrible product people and after 30 years geeks are still waiting for “The Year of Linux on the Desktop”.

What you're advocating for is more like the Bluetooth hijacking when you get in a car of transferring your call from you ear piece to your sound system as if you want to blast your phone call to everyone in the parking lot. Turn on car doesn't mean hijack Bluetooth connection. Let me phrase this another way: "Computer, I told you to transfer file, not strip meta data". About Linux: it won the Unix war, the cloud comp…

And absolutely no one knows they are using Linux. Google had to hide all of the Unix underpinnings and do things like this to make it usable.

As far as the BT car issue. I don’t have that issue. I turned off wireless CarPlay, don’t use BT and I connect my phone to my car using a regular old USB C cable to avoid that issue - and it’s more reliable

Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

#227

Post by embedding-shape »

edent wrote: post #214
embedding-shape wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted for this, so I guess I kind of accidentally nerdsniped myself here... Anyways, I did this: https://jsbin.com/teriduyexe/edit?html,output Which correctly seems to show the EXIF for uploaded images (both in Chrome and Firefox), and correctly filters things in the file picker window. What am I missing, why is this infeasible as a solution?

I've just tried that in Chrome and Firefox on Android 16. Both just show zeros in the GPS EXIF - the rest of the data are passed through unaltered.

Aha, that'd explain it. Thanks a bunch for trying it out and telling me!

Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

#228

Post by JTbane »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #165
Shalomboy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first eye-opening moment working within the government was with team of herpetologists at the state conservation agency. They had a pretty slick public education campaign around protecting Gopher Tortoise habitats and a grand call-to-action "let the agency know where and when they see their nests". The whole thing fell apart because they were getting tons of earnestly-submitted junk data from earnestly-engaged cit…

Really? You don’t understand why people wouldn’t want to share their location with the government?

If a state environmental agency asks you for your location on photos that you volunteered to upload and you freak out, you might be mentally ill.

Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

#229

Post by username223 »

WarmWash wrote: post #104
edgineer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not all-or-nothing; sometimes some people at Google push for some things to improve privacy. Rarely happens when revenue is at stake. Android used to ask you "do you want to alllow internet access?" as an app permission. Google removed that, as it would stop ads from showing up. Devastating change for privacy and security, great for revenue.

It's not great for revenue, it is their revenue. People act like Google products are a charity that had been free forever, and then this mega-corp called Google came along and started harvesting the data of innocent people who just want to get directions to Starbucks.

Google is pretty much just a wrapper around DoubleClick.

Re: Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

#230

Post by Johnny555 »

I like having location in my photo album (so I can easily search for vacation photos, or figure out where a photo was taken), but I don't want it stored in the photo metadata I share the photo. Is there any way to have Apple or Google photos track the location when the photo is uploaded, but not store it in the photo itself?
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