Photo Metadata Privacy
By uploading photos, people partially relinquish the control over shared images. Critically, only few people are aware that most of their photos contain more information than the visual content itself, i.e. the image metadata. Besides the visual content, this data can amplify or even create threats to users’ privacy. In the early days of digital imaging, metadata had to be manually—and thus consciously—added to the images. However, current cameras are capable of embedding metadata like GPS coordinates, a camera owner’s name or the position of faces into photos automatically. Thus, people may not be aware of it.
We need to raise awareness about shared metadata.
This Chrome extension does a first step towards this.
- It hints users to the invisible metadata by indicator icons.
- It shows users the full extent of metadata with a privacy focus.
- Metadata is grouped and special information can be colored in the sidebar view.
- As a proof of concept it implements a just in time modification of embedded metadata that allows people to change metadata before they loose control over it when sharing an image.
The base version of this extension was implemented within the bachelor thesis of Maximilian K. at the Distributed Computing & Security Group at the Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany. The topic was outlined and the thesis was advised by Benjamin H.
The extension has been evaluated in a lab study. Study results and more about this extension can be found in the conference publication referenced below.
Screenshots
Metadata indicators on top of the image signal which metadata is embedded. By clicking them, the sidebar view shows details.
Proof of concept of the just in time modification on image upload.
Publications
- B. Henne, M. Koch, M. Smith: On the Awareness, Control and Privacy of Shared Photo Metadata. 18th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, volume 8437 of LNCS, Springer, 2014. (paper, conference version)
Support or Contact
Feel free to contact @bhenne.