McAfee: Photo 'location' leak meant to mislead cops
The ongoing saga of John McAfee, the tech entrepreneur-turned-fugitive, took a twist today when Vice magazine published a photo that appeared to indicate he had taken refuge in Guatemala.
That deduction was based on the EXIF location metadata associated with the image, which the camera applications included with iOS and Android devices include, depending on what privacy settings are configured. Some news organizations, as well as Sophos, seized on that apparent security lapse.
But EXIF latitude and longitude data can easily be modified. Freeware utilities like GeoSetter let you do just that. And that's what McAfee says he did to the photo posted on Vice's Web site -- waging, in other words, a kind of electronic disinformation campaign without the magazine's permission.
