Michelle Obama, Reese Witherspoon and other celebs are leaking location information on Instagram
On Monday, the AP dropped a big scoop about a rising Republican star who has been using taxpayer money and campaign funds to finance personal trips around the country. The AP journalists said the source for the takedown was Instagram:
“The AP tracked [Illinois Rep. Aaron] Schock’s reliance on the aircraft partly through the congressman’s penchant for uploading pictures and videos of himself to his Instagram account. The AP extracted location data associated with each image then correlated it with flight records showing airport stopovers and expenses later billed for air travel against Schock’s office and campaign records.”
The AP journalists “extracted location data” using the Instagram API, but you can also do this at home by looking at a user’s Instagram photo map. By default, Instagram strips metadata — including location coordinates — off photos that are uploaded to the network, but users can elect to add location information when they post, which then displays those geo-tagged photos on a map. (If a phone’s privacy settings are such that they don’t record location when they take a photo, the location that gets displayed is where the phone is when the photo gets uploaded, not necessarily where the photo was actually taken.) It’s this information that got Schock busted.
Schock’s free-wheeling Instagram account is not the first time location information from the social network has fueled a news story. Last year, when Russia claimed it hadn’t invaded Ukraine, Buzzfeed discovered that a selfie-posting Russian soldier had included location information on his Instagram photos that revealed that he and his unit were in Ukrainian territory.
Location display on Instagram photos is “off” by default, but if you decide to toggle the “add to photo map” switch to blue—a.k.a. “yes, share my whereabouts!”—it stays that way until you toggle it back to the “no” position. So if you forget you turned it on one time, you may be leaving behind a trail of geolocation info that you don’t actually want exposed to the world.
I took a stroll through some famous people’s Instagram accounts and discovered that a few of them seem to be unintentionally attaching location information to their photos.
The list includes Michelle Obama, whose recent photos have all been geotagged, but who might not necessarily want to reveal her whereabouts for security reasons. Many of her photos were uploaded from the White House (obviously), but quite a few—including one of the Obama dogs in front of the White House—were uploaded from the Adams Morgan neighborhood, which may reveal where the social media person running her account lives or works:
The White House press office did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Oscar nominee Reese Witherspoon is also leaking location information from her Instagram account. Photos taken on Sunday night before, during and after the awards ceremony were uploaded from all over Los Angeles, and may reveal where she—or the person who runs her account—live or work. These photos were uploaded on the spot from right around the Dolby Theater where the Oscars were held:
But these other photos from the night—including one with fellow nominee Robert Duvall at the Vanity Fair Oscar after-party —were uploaded later from a location on Venice Beach, far away from the festivities: