So you bitch and moan to the last mile provider for something that they not only have no control over but with admitted proof that your connection is solid. Ridiculous indeed.
Complaining may have a low chance of getting anything changed, but not complaining has a 0% chance. If Apple receives a complaint from a customer and a request from a network provider, then accumulated with other complaints that might prompt them to do something. Don't ask don't get.
So, ridiculous? Really? Bitching and moaning? Really?
Maybe put yourself in someone else's shoes for once, rather than pouring scorn from your ivory tower.
So you bitch and moan to the last mile provider for something that they not only have no control over but with admitted proof that your connection is solid. Ridiculous indeed.
Last mile providers can in fact have great influence on the speed of various services if they choke their connections to the other parts of the internet. Just look at Netflix and Verizon.
Complaining may have a low chance of getting anything changed, but not complaining has a 0% chance. If Apple receives a complaint from a customer and a request from a network provider, then accumulated with other complaints that might prompt them to do something. Don't ask don't get.
So, ridiculous? Really? Bitching and moaning? Really?
Maybe put yourself in someone else's shoes for once, rather than pouring scorn from your ivory tower.
Only a fool complains to an entity that has neither has the ability nor care to fix the problem caused by another company.
Last mile providers can in fact have great influence on the speed of various services if they choke their connections to the other parts of the internet. Just look at Netflix and Verizon.
Sure, if you can prove that her ISP was purposely throttling iClould traffic, and letting Google and MS traffic through just fine. You''lI also have to explain why the distances and countries the traffic had to traverse were mentioned if her position was that her ISP was artificially limited iCloud traffic. Good luck.
Only a fool complains to an entity that has neither has the ability nor care to fix the problem caused by another company.
What is that, Solipsism's Law?
Only a fool tries to make up their own clumsy platitudes about complicated things like national network infrastructure, complaints policies and corporate motivations.
Relic already said that Swisscom have an option on the table for shifting from a deal with a German network to a deal with a Belgium network to deal with the speed issues. Clearly they care enough for it to be a consideration. Companies care when there are enough complaints.
Only a fool tries to make up their own clumsy platitudes about complicated things like national network infrastructure, complaints policies and corporate motivations.
Relic already said that Swisscom have an option on the table for shifting from a deal with a German network to a deal with a Belgium network to deal with the speed issues. Clearly they care enough for it to be a consideration. Companies care when there are enough complaints.
1) Your unintended irony is hilarious.
2) None of that changes the fact that Swisscom isn't responsible for iCloud servers being placed in Ireland instead of 10 to 30 miles away. Reasonable people look for solutions, like contacting Apple to petition to get more server farms throughout Europe, not bitching to their ISP because Apple hasn't setup shop next door. One could even use comparisons to MS and Google's servers as well as transfer issues between nation ISPs in a proposal, but there is nothing to be gained by calling a Swisscom CSR to bemoan how unfair it is that Apple isn't best door to where you live.
Your understanding of "unintended" is interesting.
Anyway, you're doing your "never back down" thing, even at the expense of needlessly being a colossal jerk. If you don't have good iCloud service, by all means complain to Apple, and also complain to other bodies that might have some additional argumentative power with Apple. Like, for example, your pipe provider.
No more time for pointless arguing with you. Have a nice day.
Your understanding of "unintended" is interesting.
Anyway, you're doing your "never back down" thing, even at the expense of needlessly being a colossal jerk. If you don't have good iCloud service, by all means complain to Apple, and also complain to other bodies that might have some additional argumentative power with Apple. Like, for example, your pipe provider.
No more time for pointless arguing with you. Have a nice day.
Thank you so much for commenting on my behalf, I really appreciate it. I went back and reread what I posted. Because English is not my primary language, I get frustrated sometimes when I can't properly convey to someone what I mean. So if my posts seemed like I was bitching and blaming Apple for the network performance of iCloid, it was not my intention. I fully understand that these things happen and it is not solely a problem with Apple or my ISP Swisscom if at all. However, someone calling me a fool because I notified both parties about the problem is indeed a little off, especially when the person didn't offer an opinion as to what they would have done in my situation. Swisscom sales iPads, iPhones and Macbook Airs bundled with a USB LTE modem. In their shop they demo the uses of these Apple products as well as the software that's installed on them, including iCloud because well obviusly its a service that you access using Swiscomms network. Access your files from anywhere using our super duper LTE network and Apple's iCloud. They do the same thing when I bought their Nokia 2520 & 1020 bundle for my daughters birthday, take a photo and then view or edit with OneDrive. So when one of their advertised services is not working as well as it should be, what would be the most logical step. Now I didn't include what I just wrote in any of my previous responses because I thought that even without this additional info it would have been an obvious action to take. iCloud isn't some random teen gossip site that I'm upset about not being able to download the newest photos of a shirtless Justin Bieber, it's a service that increases the functionality of Apple devices sold by Swisscom, the same thing goes for iCloud. I called Apple because A. I'm not just using the free 5GB but a purchased 50GB and B.streaming from Apple TV is working just fine. Because iCloud is available within the majority of apps that support accessing data from the cloud, which by the way if I wanted to bitch about something it would be this, I purchased the extra 50 GB because its the closest thing I can get to a file manager in iOS and I need it to transfer my music files around.
Whoooohhhh, okay so was I wrong for contacting Apple and Swisscom's tech support or should I have just shrugged it off in fear of being a complete fool.
I think what you posted was fine and perfectly understandable, whether English is your first, second, third, or nth language. Solipsism is just being Solipsism.
Thank you so much for commenting on my behalf, I really appreciate it. I went back and reread what I posted. Because English is not my primary language, I get frustrated sometimes when I can't properly convey to someone what I mean. So if my posts seemed like I was bitching and blaming Apple for the network performance of iCloid, it was not my intention. I fully understand that these things happen and it is not solely a problem with Apple or my ISP Swisscom if at all. However, someone calling me a fool because I notified both parties about the problem is indeed a little off, especially when the person didn't offer an opinion as to what they would have done in my situation. Swisscom sales iPads, iPhones and Macbook Airs bundled with a USB LTE modem. In their shop they demo the uses of these Apple products as well as the software that's installed on them, including iCloud because well obviusly its a service that you access using Swiscomms network. Access your files from anywhere using our super duper LTE network and Apple's iCloud. They do the same thing when I bought their Nokia 2520 & 1020 bundle for my daughters birthday, take a photo and then view or edit with OneDrive. So when one of their advertised services is not working as well as it should be, what would be the most logical step. Now I didn't include what I just wrote in any of my previous responses because I thought that even without this additional info it would have been an obvious action to take. iCloud isn't some random teen gossip site that I'm upset about not being able to download the newest photos of a shirtless Justin Bieber, it's a service that increases the functionality of Apple devices sold by Swisscom, the same thing goes for iCloud. I called Apple because A. I'm not just using the free 5GB but a purchased 50GB and B.streaming from Apple TV is working just fine. Because iCloud is available within the majority of apps that support accessing data from the cloud, which by the way if I wanted to bitch about something it would be this, I purchased the extra 50 GB because its the closest thing I can get to a file manager in iOS and I need it to transfer my music files around.
Whoooohhhh, okay so was I wrong for contacting Apple and Swisscom's tech support or should I have just shrugged it off in fear of being a complete fool.
Don't blame the English language for your poor reasoning skills. You know damn well you mastery of English is exceptional.
Wow, an insult and a compliment in a single paragraph, I now know how a proton and an electron feel within the confines of Atom.
Outstanding! It's comments like this that make reading here worthwhile.
I can't believe I've missed that you're back (except that I don't sign in very often). Welcome back!
This (thread on iCloud storage plans!) doesn't seems like the most appropriate place to be commenting, but after poking around a bit and seeing a bunch of your recent comments, I'm so happy to hear about your ongoing recovery. Certainly there are no guarantees with anything like this, but whether you get extra months, years, or decades, it sounds like a much better scenario than a few months ago. Best of luck!
Now I guess we can all get back to the daily quibbling and bickering... ;-)
So, taking the thread back a closer to the original topic:
My wife and I decided yesterday that we should look into cloud backup for her ~250GB photo library since an earthquake or fire would take out not only her primary storage but the backup too, since they're both in the house. We didn't get into exhaustive research because a cursory look was all it took for us to decide that, at least until we see what larger plans from Apple cost when they announce them, Google Drive is a no-brainer. $10/month for a TB? That's roughly the same price as 200GB from Amazon and a measly 50GB from Apple (again, at current rates).
I get the privacy concerns, but honestly, what are they gonna glean from a big stack of photos? The pics have squat for metadata -- no geo, no tags -- so unless they're going to do some heavy face recognition I don't think we're revealing anything that could adversely affect us. At least not any more so than with any other third-party storage solution.
Unless Apple really sharpens their pencil in a serious way, and history doesn't suggest we should be particularly optimistic, I can't see any reason for us not to go with Google for this.
So, taking the thread back a closer to the original topic:
My wife and I decided yesterday that we should look into cloud backup for her ~250GB photo library since an earthquake or fire would take out not only her primary storage but the backup too, since they're both in the house. We didn't get into exhaustive research because a cursory look was all it took for us to decide that, at least until we see what larger plans from Apple cost when they announce them, Google Drive is a no-brainer. $10/month for a TB? That's roughly the same price as 200GB from Amazon and a measly 50GB from Apple (again, at current rates).
I get the privacy concerns, but honestly, what are they gonna glean from a big stack of photos? The pics have squat for metadata -- no geo, no tags -- so unless they're going to do some heavy face recognition I don't think we're revealing anything that could adversely affect us. At least not any more so than with any other third-party storage solution.
Unless Apple really sharpens their pencil in a serious way, and history doesn't suggest we should be particularly optimistic, I can't see any reason for us not to go with Google for this.
So, taking the thread back a closer to the original topic:
My wife and I decided yesterday that we should look into cloud backup for her ~250GB photo library since an earthquake or fire would take out not only her primary storage but the backup too, since they're both in the house. We didn't get into exhaustive research because a cursory look was all it took for us to decide that, at least until we see what larger plans from Apple cost when they announce them, Google Drive is a no-brainer. $10/month for a TB? That's roughly the same price as 200GB from Amazon and a measly 50GB from Apple (again, at current rates).
I get the privacy concerns, but honestly, what are they gonna glean from a big stack of photos? The pics have squat for metadata -- no geo, no tags -- so unless they're going to do some heavy face recognition I don't think we're revealing anything that could adversely affect us. At least not any more so than with any other third-party storage solution.
I'm a little late with this reply, but if you think google isn't doing "heavy face recognition", you haven't been following along.
All the way back in 2010 Eric Schmidt famously said: “Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don’t have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You’ve got Facebook photos!”
That was in 2010. How good do you think they are now?
Here's another question: you say that your pics have squat for metadata. First, are you quite sure about that? Do both you and your wife take zero photos with your phones? Unless you've taken active steps to disable and/or remove metadata from those photos, it's there. Second, once you get dependent on these services, it's hard to break out. Will your next camera have WiFi or geo-tagging built in and turned on by default? Will you be able to disable them? Will you remember a year from now that you didn't want your 3rd party data mining storage provider to have that info?
People on the street have little concept of how deeply data mining companies are reaching to extract information about who you are, where you are, what you do, etc. It's their lifeblood and it's worth $Billions to them. Did you take some photos with a famous landmark in the background? You're geo-tracked. Okay, that's easy. But realize that at this point virtually every major building's facade, every famous skyline, etc. has been photographed by not just amateurs uploading their photos, but by professionals gathering that data for more advanced mapping, ie. StreetView and other such applications. If you take a photo and these things are in the background, bingo, it's been geotagged. I'm not sure how good they are at this yet, but they are working on it, and frankly my knowledge of what they're doing is usually at least months behind, so my guess is they're already getting pretty good at this.
For everyone: You may be one of those that don't care about being tracked around like animals wherever you go, and that's fully your choice. But please, please, if you have kids, DO NOT make that choice for them by uploading pictures of them. They do not yet have the ability to understand the issues, and you're not giving them a chance to make that decision for themselves when they are old enough to understand.
So, taking the thread back a closer to the original topic:
My wife and I decided yesterday that we should look into cloud backup for her ~250GB photo library since an earthquake or fire would take out not only her primary storage but the backup too, since they're both in the house. We didn't get into exhaustive research because a cursory look was all it took for us to decide that, at least until we see what larger plans from Apple cost when they announce them, Google Drive is a no-brainer. $10/month for a TB? That's roughly the same price as 200GB from Amazon and a measly 50GB from Apple (again, at current rates).
I get the privacy concerns, but honestly, what are they gonna glean from a big stack of photos? The pics have squat for metadata -- no geo, no tags -- so unless they're going to do some heavy face recognition I don't think we're revealing anything that could adversely affect us. At least not any more so than with any other third-party storage solution.
I'm a little late with this reply, but if you think google isn't doing "heavy face recognition", you haven't been following along.
All the way back in 2010 Eric Schmidt famously said: “Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don’t have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You’ve got Facebook photos!”
That was in 2010. How good do you think they are now?
Here's another question: you say that your pics have squat for metadata. First, are you quite sure about that? Do both you and your wife take zero photos with your phones? Unless you've taken active steps to disable and/or remove metadata from those photos, it's there. Second, once you get dependent on these services, it's hard to break out. Will your next camera have WiFi or geo-tagging built in and turned on by default? Will you be able to disable them? Will you remember a year from now that you didn't want your 3rd party data mining storage provider to have that info?
People on the street have little concept of how deeply data mining companies are reaching to extract information about who you are, where you are, what you do, etc. It's their lifeblood and it's worth $Billions to them. Did you take some photos with a famous landmark in the background? You're geo-tracked. Okay, that's easy. But realize that at this point virtually every major building's facade, every famous skyline, etc. has been photographed by not just amateurs uploading their photos, but by professionals gathering that data for more advanced mapping, ie. StreetView and other such applications. If you take a photo and these things are in the background, bingo, it's been geotagged. I'm not sure how good they are at this yet, but they are working on it, and frankly my knowledge of what they're doing is usually at least months behind, so my guess is they're already getting pretty good at this.
For everyone: You may be one of those that don't care about being tracked around like animals wherever you go, and that's fully your choice. But please, please, if you have kids, DO NOT make that choice for them by uploading pictures of them. They do not yet have the ability to understand the issues, and you're not giving them a chance to make that decision for themselves when they are old enough to understand.
That's why I mail pictures of my junk using a film camera. It's real cheap to do, the Fotomat guy keeps saying it's on the house, must be some kind of promotional deal going on.
That's why I mail pictures of my junk using a film camera. It's real cheap to do, the Fotomat guy keeps saying it's on the house, must be some kind of promotional deal going on.
Comments
So you bitch and moan to the last mile provider for something that they not only have no control over but with admitted proof that your connection is solid. Ridiculous indeed.
Complaining may have a low chance of getting anything changed, but not complaining has a 0% chance. If Apple receives a complaint from a customer and a request from a network provider, then accumulated with other complaints that might prompt them to do something. Don't ask don't get.
So, ridiculous? Really? Bitching and moaning? Really?
Maybe put yourself in someone else's shoes for once, rather than pouring scorn from your ivory tower.
So you bitch and moan to the last mile provider for something that they not only have no control over but with admitted proof that your connection is solid. Ridiculous indeed.
Last mile providers can in fact have great influence on the speed of various services if they choke their connections to the other parts of the internet. Just look at Netflix and Verizon.
Only a fool complains to an entity that has neither has the ability nor care to fix the problem caused by another company.
Sure, if you can prove that her ISP was purposely throttling iClould traffic, and letting Google and MS traffic through just fine. You''lI also have to explain why the distances and countries the traffic had to traverse were mentioned if her position was that her ISP was artificially limited iCloud traffic. Good luck.
Only a fool complains to an entity that has neither has the ability nor care to fix the problem caused by another company.
What is that, Solipsism's Law?
Relic already said that Swisscom have an option on the table for shifting from a deal with a German network to a deal with a Belgium network to deal with the speed issues. Clearly they care enough for it to be a consideration. Companies care when there are enough complaints.
1) Your unintended irony is hilarious.
2) None of that changes the fact that Swisscom isn't responsible for iCloud servers being placed in Ireland instead of 10 to 30 miles away. Reasonable people look for solutions, like contacting Apple to petition to get more server farms throughout Europe, not bitching to their ISP because Apple hasn't setup shop next door. One could even use comparisons to MS and Google's servers as well as transfer issues between nation ISPs in a proposal, but there is nothing to be gained by calling a Swisscom CSR to bemoan how unfair it is that Apple isn't best door to where you live.
Anyway, you're doing your "never back down" thing, even at the expense of needlessly being a colossal jerk. If you don't have good iCloud service, by all means complain to Apple, and also complain to other bodies that might have some additional argumentative power with Apple. Like, for example, your pipe provider.
No more time for pointless arguing with you. Have a nice day.
Thank you so much for commenting on my behalf, I really appreciate it. I went back and reread what I posted. Because English is not my primary language, I get frustrated sometimes when I can't properly convey to someone what I mean. So if my posts seemed like I was bitching and blaming Apple for the network performance of iCloid, it was not my intention. I fully understand that these things happen and it is not solely a problem with Apple or my ISP Swisscom if at all. However, someone calling me a fool because I notified both parties about the problem is indeed a little off, especially when the person didn't offer an opinion as to what they would have done in my situation. Swisscom sales iPads, iPhones and Macbook Airs bundled with a USB LTE modem. In their shop they demo the uses of these Apple products as well as the software that's installed on them, including iCloud because well obviusly its a service that you access using Swiscomms network. Access your files from anywhere using our super duper LTE network and Apple's iCloud. They do the same thing when I bought their Nokia 2520 & 1020 bundle for my daughters birthday, take a photo and then view or edit with OneDrive. So when one of their advertised services is not working as well as it should be, what would be the most logical step. Now I didn't include what I just wrote in any of my previous responses because I thought that even without this additional info it would have been an obvious action to take. iCloud isn't some random teen gossip site that I'm upset about not being able to download the newest photos of a shirtless Justin Bieber, it's a service that increases the functionality of Apple devices sold by Swisscom, the same thing goes for iCloud. I called Apple because A. I'm not just using the free 5GB but a purchased 50GB and B.streaming from Apple TV is working just fine. Because iCloud is available within the majority of apps that support accessing data from the cloud, which by the way if I wanted to bitch about something it would be this, I purchased the extra 50 GB because its the closest thing I can get to a file manager in iOS and I need it to transfer my music files around.
Whoooohhhh, okay so was I wrong for contacting Apple and Swisscom's tech support or should I have just shrugged it off in fear of being a complete fool.
Don't blame the English language for your poor reasoning skills. You know damn well you mastery of English is exceptional.
/s, though if you feel it's needed you're an imbecile
Wow, an insult and a compliment in a single paragraph, I now know how a proton and an electron feel within the confines of Atom.
Don't blame the English language for your poor reasoning skills. You know damn well you mastery of English is exceptional.
Wow, an insult and a compliment in a single paragraph, I now know how a proton and an electron feel within the confines of Atom.
Are you suggesting that SolipsismX is a neutron?
Wow, an insult and a compliment in a single paragraph, I now know how a proton and an electron feel within the confines of Atom.
Outstanding! It's comments like this that make reading here worthwhile.
I can't believe I've missed that you're back (except that I don't sign in very often). Welcome back!
This (thread on iCloud storage plans!) doesn't seems like the most appropriate place to be commenting, but after poking around a bit and seeing a bunch of your recent comments, I'm so happy to hear about your ongoing recovery. Certainly there are no guarantees with anything like this, but whether you get extra months, years, or decades, it sounds like a much better scenario than a few months ago. Best of luck!
Now I guess we can all get back to the daily quibbling and bickering... ;-)
So, taking the thread back a closer to the original topic:
My wife and I decided yesterday that we should look into cloud backup for her ~250GB photo library since an earthquake or fire would take out not only her primary storage but the backup too, since they're both in the house. We didn't get into exhaustive research because a cursory look was all it took for us to decide that, at least until we see what larger plans from Apple cost when they announce them, Google Drive is a no-brainer. $10/month for a TB? That's roughly the same price as 200GB from Amazon and a measly 50GB from Apple (again, at current rates).
I get the privacy concerns, but honestly, what are they gonna glean from a big stack of photos? The pics have squat for metadata -- no geo, no tags -- so unless they're going to do some heavy face recognition I don't think we're revealing anything that could adversely affect us. At least not any more so than with any other third-party storage solution.
Unless Apple really sharpens their pencil in a serious way, and history doesn't suggest we should be particularly optimistic, I can't see any reason for us not to go with Google for this.
Flickr gives you a TB for free.
So, taking the thread back a closer to the original topic:
My wife and I decided yesterday that we should look into cloud backup for her ~250GB photo library since an earthquake or fire would take out not only her primary storage but the backup too, since they're both in the house. We didn't get into exhaustive research because a cursory look was all it took for us to decide that, at least until we see what larger plans from Apple cost when they announce them, Google Drive is a no-brainer. $10/month for a TB? That's roughly the same price as 200GB from Amazon and a measly 50GB from Apple (again, at current rates).
I get the privacy concerns, but honestly, what are they gonna glean from a big stack of photos? The pics have squat for metadata -- no geo, no tags -- so unless they're going to do some heavy face recognition I don't think we're revealing anything that could adversely affect us. At least not any more so than with any other third-party storage solution.
I'm a little late with this reply, but if you think google isn't doing "heavy face recognition", you haven't been following along.
All the way back in 2010 Eric Schmidt famously said: “Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don’t have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You’ve got Facebook photos!”
See: http://allthingsd.com/20110120/talking-schmidt-googles-ceo-in-his-own-words/ for this and various other memorable quotes.
That was in 2010. How good do you think they are now?
Here's another question: you say that your pics have squat for metadata. First, are you quite sure about that? Do both you and your wife take zero photos with your phones? Unless you've taken active steps to disable and/or remove metadata from those photos, it's there. Second, once you get dependent on these services, it's hard to break out. Will your next camera have WiFi or geo-tagging built in and turned on by default? Will you be able to disable them? Will you remember a year from now that you didn't want your 3rd party data mining storage provider to have that info?
People on the street have little concept of how deeply data mining companies are reaching to extract information about who you are, where you are, what you do, etc. It's their lifeblood and it's worth $Billions to them. Did you take some photos with a famous landmark in the background? You're geo-tracked. Okay, that's easy. But realize that at this point virtually every major building's facade, every famous skyline, etc. has been photographed by not just amateurs uploading their photos, but by professionals gathering that data for more advanced mapping, ie. StreetView and other such applications. If you take a photo and these things are in the background, bingo, it's been geotagged. I'm not sure how good they are at this yet, but they are working on it, and frankly my knowledge of what they're doing is usually at least months behind, so my guess is they're already getting pretty good at this.
For everyone: You may be one of those that don't care about being tracked around like animals wherever you go, and that's fully your choice. But please, please, if you have kids, DO NOT make that choice for them by uploading pictures of them. They do not yet have the ability to understand the issues, and you're not giving them a chance to make that decision for themselves when they are old enough to understand.
So, taking the thread back a closer to the original topic:
My wife and I decided yesterday that we should look into cloud backup for her ~250GB photo library since an earthquake or fire would take out not only her primary storage but the backup too, since they're both in the house. We didn't get into exhaustive research because a cursory look was all it took for us to decide that, at least until we see what larger plans from Apple cost when they announce them, Google Drive is a no-brainer. $10/month for a TB? That's roughly the same price as 200GB from Amazon and a measly 50GB from Apple (again, at current rates).
I get the privacy concerns, but honestly, what are they gonna glean from a big stack of photos? The pics have squat for metadata -- no geo, no tags -- so unless they're going to do some heavy face recognition I don't think we're revealing anything that could adversely affect us. At least not any more so than with any other third-party storage solution.
I'm a little late with this reply, but if you think google isn't doing "heavy face recognition", you haven't been following along.
All the way back in 2010 Eric Schmidt famously said: “Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don’t have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You’ve got Facebook photos!”
See: http://allthingsd.com/20110120/talking-schmidt-googles-ceo-in-his-own-words/ for this and various other memorable quotes.
That was in 2010. How good do you think they are now?
Here's another question: you say that your pics have squat for metadata. First, are you quite sure about that? Do both you and your wife take zero photos with your phones? Unless you've taken active steps to disable and/or remove metadata from those photos, it's there. Second, once you get dependent on these services, it's hard to break out. Will your next camera have WiFi or geo-tagging built in and turned on by default? Will you be able to disable them? Will you remember a year from now that you didn't want your 3rd party data mining storage provider to have that info?
People on the street have little concept of how deeply data mining companies are reaching to extract information about who you are, where you are, what you do, etc. It's their lifeblood and it's worth $Billions to them. Did you take some photos with a famous landmark in the background? You're geo-tracked. Okay, that's easy. But realize that at this point virtually every major building's facade, every famous skyline, etc. has been photographed by not just amateurs uploading their photos, but by professionals gathering that data for more advanced mapping, ie. StreetView and other such applications. If you take a photo and these things are in the background, bingo, it's been geotagged. I'm not sure how good they are at this yet, but they are working on it, and frankly my knowledge of what they're doing is usually at least months behind, so my guess is they're already getting pretty good at this.
For everyone: You may be one of those that don't care about being tracked around like animals wherever you go, and that's fully your choice. But please, please, if you have kids, DO NOT make that choice for them by uploading pictures of them. They do not yet have the ability to understand the issues, and you're not giving them a chance to make that decision for themselves when they are old enough to understand.
That's why I mail pictures of my junk using a film camera. It's real cheap to do, the Fotomat guy keeps saying it's on the house, must be some kind of promotional deal going on.
You mean junk laying around in your garage?
You mean junk laying around in your garage?
Uuuuummmmm sure, yeah, that's what I meant.