Will a Cell Phone Picture give away your Hide Out ?

A hacker called Simple Nomad learned McAfee’s location shortly after journalists posted an image of him from his supposedly secret locale under the provocative headline, “We are with John McAfee right now, suckers.”

Embedded in that image, apparently taken by one of the journalists, was the sort of detailed data routinely collected by smartphone cameras and often transmitted along with images wherever they go — on e-mail, Facebook, online photo albums and, it turns out, to Vice magazine’s Web site.

Simple Nomad, who declined to give any identifying personal details in an e-mail interview, examined the underlying data and quickly learned that McAfee’s image emanated from an iPhone 4S at the following location: “Latitude/longitude: 15° 39’ 29.4 North, 88° 59’ 31.8 West,” at 12:26 p.m. Monday.

map of McAfee hideout


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