A couple of Harvard students have been studying the dark web in an attempt to see what personal information they could actually retrieve from it. Many people are under the impression that because it’s the dark web then everything is untraceable and all the criminal undergoing can carry on as normal without any worries of being detected or caught, but this is not the case at all.
During their study, the students revealed over 220 drug and weapon dealers by simply taking a deeper look at the pictures that were taken by criminals and used in advertisements on the dark web. By analyzing these photos, the students were able to extract EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data that gives away data relating to the device in which the image was taken. This can include image dimensions, date and time of the original and modified shot, the camera model and its settings, the editing software used, the creator and copyright info as well as GPS data from where the image was taken.
EXIF data is very useful and allows police to trace criminals all the time for example in a hostage situation where someone was being held for ransom. Any images could provide valuable hidden information that may lead back to the kidnapper. Although many people who operate on the dark web are careful, many are not. Out of the 223,471 images that were examined from the dark web, 229 contained geolocation data within them. So, if you are privacy conscious and don’t want any of your data being thrown out there, you can always delete the EXIF data just to be on the safe side.
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