Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

egeozcan

This must be a Chrome thing, not an Android thing, no? I didn't test this but I'd be surprised if Firefox behaved the same.

iamcalledrob

Similarly, 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).

ieie3366

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

embedding-shape

Couldn't you use <input type="file" accept=".jpg,.jpeg"> (different than image/jpeg mime-type I think, not sure if that also strips EXIF?), then manually parse the EXIF in JS? Shouldn't be that complicated to parse and I'm guessing there is a bunch of libraries for doing just that should you not want to do that yourself.

sixhobbits

It'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.

adrianN

How good are LLMs at geoguessing?

softwaredoug

Is location sharing something you can disable in iOS?

II2II

Yes, I get it. It is inconvenient for legitimate uses. The problem is that our devices leak too much confidential data. Privacy was mentioned outright in the article. Safety/security was alluded to with an example, which is something that goes far beyond a company's image or even liability. Unfortunately, there is no good way to solve the problem while maintaining convenience. As the author noted, prompts while uploading don't really work. Application defaults don't really work for web browsers, since what is acceptable for one website isn't necessarily acceptable for another. Having the user enter the location through the website make the user aware of the information being disclosed, but it is inconvenient. Does the situation suck? Yes. On the other hand, I think Google is doing the responsible thing here.

eminence32

> 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.

1970-01-01

>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.

zenmac

Nice drunk theme! All web site should have one.

adzm

This 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.

flipped

GrapheneOS already does this, since forever. Android can't stop copying GOS. Maybe they'll add a network toggle after a few years and call it a privacy win.

antiloper

I don't know a good solution for this. 99% of websites asking for this hypothetical permission would not deserve it. Users (rightfully) don't expect that uploading a photo leaks their location. Element (the matrix client) used to not strip geolocation metadata for the longest time. I don't know if they fixed that yet.

celsoazevedo

For most users, I think this is a good change. I used to run a small website that allowed users to upload pictures. Most people were not aware that they were telling me where they were, when the picture was taken, their altitude, which direction they were facing, etc.

p_stuart82

defaulting to strip location on share, fine. demoting plain old <input type=file> into "find a usb cable" / "go build an app" is a hell of a line to draw

izacus

Apple was massively praised when they started stripping location data from shared and uploaded photos.

bilsbie

Does iPhone do this? Kind of scary to be accidentally sending your home address anywhere you upload a photo.

srcoder

Already use imagepipe [0] since forever, sometimes it takes soms extra time, still worth the effort. Most of the time I take a picture share with imagepipe, share with external and don't share anything else I will never share my location via images with anybody then myself. I do use location for my local Photoprism on my own server 0 https://codeberg.org/Starfish/Imagepipe#how-to-get-the-app

simonw

Surprisingly iOS doesn't do this - at least not for photos uploaded via a web form these days. Try this tool to see that (it should demonstrate the Android EXIF stripping behavior too): https://tools.simonwillison.net/exif