Digital images and video may contain embedded metadata including, for example, an owner's name, location, time of day, camera settings, and other image associated attributes. For example, some digital cameras and other devices may use the Exchangeable Image File format (EXIF) to store metadata in an image, video, or audio file. The use of such metadata is increasing with an increase in the use of digital cameras, cell phones, PDAs, and other devices. Such metadata may be useful to search for and/or organize images or video by location, time, name, etc. However, digital images and/or video are frequently not secured and may be shared (e.g., posted to the Internet on a social networking site or a photo sharing site.) Users may not be aware of the metadata associated with their images and/or video and may not understand implications and potential vulnerabilities of making metadata and images or video publicly available. A malicious user could use this information to stalk someone. A criminal could search for public social networking profiles (e.g., Facebook profiles) in an area, download the images and try to figure out the times of day that a person is out of their house, etc. In addition to criminal threats, a user loses further privacy by publicly exposing not only the image but also the date, time, and name associated with the image or other media file.
Deleting such metadata may lose all of the benefits of the metadata. Making all of the metadata publicly available may create all of the vulnerabilities described above.
In view of the foregoing, it may be understood that there may be significant problems and shortcomings associated with current multimedia metadata security technologies.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds