Geolocation
What is geolocation?
Geolocation refers to the use of location technologies such as GPS or IP addresses to identify and track the location of connected electronic devices (also known as your cellphone). Because these devices are often carried on an individual's person, geolocation is often used to track the movements and location of people and surveillance. Yes, you read it right, your phone might and pretty sure it's tracking you! 🤯👀
How can it be used against you?
First question, do you have or aware of any apps that track ur movement? For example, do you have a vehicle insurance app that tracks ur speed? Better yet, do you use Snapchat and do you post to the world? If you answered YES! .. keep reading.
Were you aware that you do NOT need an account to view the SnapMap? Yes, you read that correctly! For someone, who is doing OSINT or surveillance, and any malicious actor, bad hombre, and people that just want to do evil things, they do not need to create a sock puppet account to gain more intel on people or a business. Stalkers must love this!! 👀
Snapchat and its geolocation, is something to consider. If you have snap you can share your location with your friends. Are you aware that when you post to the world, you are also giving away your location, within a couple house radius? This is worrisome, if someone is posting information from inside their home. We found videos of people posting video from their home, of their kids. As a parent, I can tell you that this raised flags for me. You gave someone intel on the inside of your home, were I could see a window, a big screen tv, two girls playing, and saying their names. Anyone with malicious intent can see where these people are generally located, and go cinduct more surveillance nearby, in attempt to gather more information, to victimize or harm these people, or kids.
What if enough of a profile was built on a potential person, and the person posts a snap, sharing their location that they are out of the country, or at work, the malicious actor could act on that information, and there are many scenarios that I will let your imagination play out.
How can you protect yourself from geolocation?
First thing, check your Snapchat 👻 settings and see if you are sharing your location. Are you sharing intentionally, if so, there is nothing wrong with sharing with people who you trust, so they know your whereabouts. Law Enforcement sometimes use snapchats location feature to find missing kids. Kids are aware of this feature and might shut it off, so let that be a condition of them having a social media account.
You also have to be aware of what you are sharing with the world. Great you want to share with the snap chat community, but is it something you should be sharing? Especially if you have kids, pedophiles have access to snap without having to create spoof accounts. Also, don't add random people to any of your social media accounts, unless you are an influencer and have separate account to your actual personal life.
Ensure your account is private for friends to view your stories. If I have a snap chat account, and I see someone in the snap world, I can access their profile and look at pass videos, giving me more intel on you, if my intent was malicious, I hit the jackpot. Also, if you post something in the snapchat world, any tech savvy person can download the video, without you even knowing. Just think, they can replay and admire the video, all they want. Lets make better decisions about what we share, take back some of your privacy.
Snapchat is one of the pioneers of facial recognition software: it allowed brands and organizations to create filters which mould the user’s face — hence the ubiquitous puppy dog faces on social media. Look at face search engines for more information on that.