Don’t share your location in photos. Please.

This tip from Brian X. Chen, The New York Times’s consumer technology columnist, made me immediately check my phone settings:

Many of us rely on our smartphones for our everyday cameras. But our phones collect lots of data about us, and camera software can automatically make a note of our location when we snap a photo. This is more often a potential safety risk than a benefit.

Let’s start with the positives. When you allow your camera to tag your location, photo management apps like Apple’s Photos and Google Photos can automatically sort pictures into albums based on location. That’s helpful when you go on vacation and want to remember where you were when you took a snapshot.

But when you’re not traveling, having your location tagged on photos is not great. Let’s say you just connected with someone on a dating app and texted a photo of your dog. If you had the location feature turned on when you snapped the photo, that person could analyze the data to see where you live.

Just to be safe, make sure the photo location feature is off by default.

To do this on iPhones: Open the Settings app, select Privacy, then Location Services and finally, Camera. Under “Allow Location Access,” choose “Never.”

On Androids, inside the Camera app, tap the Settings icon that looks like a gear cog. Scroll to “tag locations” or “save location,” and switch the toggle to the off position.

You might choose to turn the location feature on temporarily to document your vacation, but remember to turn it off when your trip is over.
The New York Times