Publication Details
Title: Cybercasing the Joint: On the Privacy Implications of Geo-Tagging
Author: G. Friedland and R. Sommer
Bibliographic Information: ICSI Technical Report TR-10-005
Date: May 3, 2010
Research Area: Audio and Multimedia, Networking and Security
Type: Technical Reports
PDF: http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/techreports/TR-10-005.pdf
Overview:
This article aims to raise awareness of a rapidly emerging privacy threat that we term cybercasing: leveraging geo-tagged information available online to mount real-world attacks. While users typically realize that sharing locations has some implications for their privacy, we provide evidence that many (i) are unaware of the full scope of the threat they face when doing so, and (ii) often do not even realize when they publish such information. The threat is elevated by recent developments that make systematic search for geo-located data and inference from multiple sources easier than ever before. In this paper, we summarize the state of geo-tagging; estimate the amount of geo-information available on several major sites, including YouTube, Twitter, and Craigslist; and examine its programmatic accessibility through public APIs. We then present a set of scenarios demonstrating how easy it is to correlate geo-tagged data with corresponding publicly-available information for compromising a victim’s privacy. We were, e.g., able to find private addresses of celebrities as well as the origins of otherwise anonymized Craigslist postings. We argue that our community needs to shape the further course of geo-location technology for better protecting users from such consequences. This technical report is a pre-print of a publication, appearing at the Fifth USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Security (HotSec '10 - http://www.usenix.org/events/hotsec10/hotsec10.html at the 19th USENIX Security Symposium, Washington, D.C. The conference paper is available http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/networking/cybercasinghotsec10.pdf.
Acknowledgements:
This work was partially supported by funding provided through the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency University Research Initiatives program (NGA NURI # HM11582-10-1-2008). Additional support was provided by funding provided to ICSI though National Science Foundation grant CNS: 0905631 ("Invigorating Empirical Network Research via Mediated Trace Analysis"). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors or originators and do not necessarily reflect the views of NGA or of the National Science Foundation.
Bibliographic Reference:
G. Friedland and R. Sommer. Cybercasing the Joint: On the Privacy Implications of Geo-Tagging. ICSI Technical Report TR-10-005, May 3, 2010
Author: G. Friedland and R. Sommer
Bibliographic Information: ICSI Technical Report TR-10-005
Date: May 3, 2010
Research Area: Audio and Multimedia, Networking and Security
Type: Technical Reports
PDF: http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/techreports/TR-10-005.pdf
Overview:
This article aims to raise awareness of a rapidly emerging privacy threat that we term cybercasing: leveraging geo-tagged information available online to mount real-world attacks. While users typically realize that sharing locations has some implications for their privacy, we provide evidence that many (i) are unaware of the full scope of the threat they face when doing so, and (ii) often do not even realize when they publish such information. The threat is elevated by recent developments that make systematic search for geo-located data and inference from multiple sources easier than ever before. In this paper, we summarize the state of geo-tagging; estimate the amount of geo-information available on several major sites, including YouTube, Twitter, and Craigslist; and examine its programmatic accessibility through public APIs. We then present a set of scenarios demonstrating how easy it is to correlate geo-tagged data with corresponding publicly-available information for compromising a victim’s privacy. We were, e.g., able to find private addresses of celebrities as well as the origins of otherwise anonymized Craigslist postings. We argue that our community needs to shape the further course of geo-location technology for better protecting users from such consequences. This technical report is a pre-print of a publication, appearing at the Fifth USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Security (HotSec '10 - http://www.usenix.org/events/hotsec10/hotsec10.html at the 19th USENIX Security Symposium, Washington, D.C. The conference paper is available http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/networking/cybercasinghotsec10.pdf.
Acknowledgements:
This work was partially supported by funding provided through the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency University Research Initiatives program (NGA NURI # HM11582-10-1-2008). Additional support was provided by funding provided to ICSI though National Science Foundation grant CNS: 0905631 ("Invigorating Empirical Network Research via Mediated Trace Analysis"). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors or originators and do not necessarily reflect the views of NGA or of the National Science Foundation.
Bibliographic Reference:
G. Friedland and R. Sommer. Cybercasing the Joint: On the Privacy Implications of Geo-Tagging. ICSI Technical Report TR-10-005, May 3, 2010