Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: A. Dubois on January 26, 2012, 12:03 am
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I'm pretty new to all this and I don't want to give out my info hidden in a pic. I'm a mac user, btw. Thanks, all.
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The people who use google do.
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http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/xee.html
probably will do the trick
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Bad idea. Pretty sure bitmaps and pngs don't remove file path infos.
Let's say you run windows then your ID or the ID of the shop that sold you that computer is in Microsoft's database (if you bought it legally) and also your directory filepath, which you've just uploaded for a particular image. i.e. C:\blah\johnsanders\image.jpg
It's possible that the name in the filepath is sufficiently unique... Most people use their first name. But I wouldn't be comfortable with that.
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As far as I know BMP files does not contain any hidden personal information in them, quick look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format confirms that.
And OP is using MAC.
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Just delete your exif data, not that hard and no outside program is needed.
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Sierra, I'm not sure that .bmp is the only wrapper for the file. I might be wrong, but use Ifranview or similar software to look at the image data for a sample .bmp on your computer, just in case there is directory path information stored as part of some kind of generic file wrapper, which would include data such as last modified, date created etc.
Toker, depending on the situation, you got to be more paranoid than just removing exif data. Photos from digital cameras also have 'signatures' inside the photos themselves. By signatures I mean artifacts of the technology used to make the photo itself. It's nothing as clear cut as exif data, it's enough to pinpoint information for an educated guess on what camera make and model was used. Now, if you registered that camera on some website or in the store, then that could turn into a problem for you in combination with some other data. e.g. only 1 person bought that camera within a certain locale that you mentioned on a web forum etc.
Naturally, this sounds rather extreme, but the software used by the DEA and FBI is built on such relational models to make educated guesses in many areas of detective work. I mean, if I was building software for the DEA, then this is precisely what I would do.
A true pro, will purchase a cheap digital camera in a shop with cash AND strip all the meta data from photos. Buyers should never have to worry about such things, but sellers should consider it.
Lastly in passing, if you take a picture with an iPhone and put it on SR, then you're in serious trouble. iPhones apparently attach geotags or GPS coordinates to their images. This is frequently the subject of much hilarity on 4chan for obvious reasons. Fuck Apple.
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Yeah I knew that about an Iphone or any smart phone really, but I was wondering if someone could lay out the exact process. Like open the the pic in Iphoto then do XYZ. I'm really not a computer guy at all and I'm still amazed I got TOR to work. I'm tackling PGP next so it's a process. Thanks all. Except maybe envious.
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Yeah I knew that about an Iphone or any smart phone really, but I was wondering if someone could lay out the exact process. Like open the the pic in Iphoto then do XYZ. I'm really not a computer guy at all and I'm still amazed I got TOR to work. I'm tackling PGP next so it's a process. Thanks all. Except maybe envious.
I think we have far too many tech gurus on here who won't explain the basics, which is unfortunate since newbies are always going to make up the majority of SR at any time. This is a good thing! More buyers and sellers.
There are lots of programs that strip meta data, one of them is this here:
http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=30&cmd=download&pid=15&lang=eng
1. Download the stripper.
2. Unzip the file.
3. Drag drop your JPEG and PNG files onto the Stripper program window.
For 99% of users, this will be enough.
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I am not a Mac user, but this is what I've found.
First open the image that you want to strip the metadata from (in an image viewer, web browser (File > Open file), etc).
Since you're a Mac user, on OS X press command-shift-3 to save a screenshot of the entire desktop as a PNG file to your desktop. Then crop it in an image editor.
Or press command-control-shift-3 to copy the entire desktop to the clipboard which you can then paste into another program and crop and save.
Or press command-shift-4 to capture a portion of the desktop and then click and drag the crosshair to select the area you want to capture and it will be saved as a PNG file on the desktop (or PDF in Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) and earlier). If you're taking screenshots, you probably want to use this method, unless you have Mac OS 10.3 or earlier.
Press command-control-shift-4 to copy a specific area to the clipboard.
BMP and PNG should be fine. Or save as BMP and then JPG. And you can view EXIF data with the Firefox extension EXIF viewer:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3905/
Or you could make a perfectly legal test image and upload it to a free imagehost outside of TOR and paste the URL of the picture here to view the EXIF data:
http://regex.info/exif.cgi
And from what I've read, files on NTFS hard drives do not contain the directory path, that is in the Master File Table.
If I were you I would do some more reading though.
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Thanks guys! I am steadily getting the hang of all this stuff, thanks to the helpful folks in these forums. Thank god you guys out number the snarky smart asses by 20 to 1!