OK, I promise, no more gold analogies since I don’t want anyone to think I’m a 49ers fan. At the heart of the matter are digital photos, meaning photos that aren’t taken with an old fashioned camera that (the horror) actually uses film. These photos, like most things in the digital world, have a lot of information associated with them, including date taken, type of camera used, photo resolution, file size, etc. Place your cursor over the photo, right click, choose “properties” and then the “details” tab, and voila, that information is there for the taking. This and other data not mentioned is called “Exchangeable Image File Format” (EXIF), and it can be very useful to photographers and others working with digital images.

The problem starts with the fact that for more and more people, their smartphone is also their camera. Unlike cameras, which are oblivious to where the person holding them is when snapping a photo, the smartphones have GPS capability and know exactly where the person holding them is. And remember EXIF? Well, one facet of EXIF is called “geotagging”, which details the exact location of the image when taken. Before smartphones became people’s cameras, the geotagging data went unused but, for folks using smartphones as cameras, the geotagging data is captured in each photo.

Now initially I’d imagine some people thought “so what if my photos have the GPS coordinates in them, it’s not like the whole world sees my photos”. And just a decade ago, that was true. But then came the internet and the Narcissist’s Nirvana, better known as Facebook. And with Facebook, it became possible for everyone who owned a smartphone and who had a hearty ego and/or intense need for attention, to delude themselves into believing that all 879 of their Facebook friends would love to see all 1,000+ photos of their recent trip to WallyWorld. And, depending on the privacy settings selected, it’s likely that many more than someone’s 879 friends can see their photos.

Now why should you be concerned? Off the top of my head, I can think of at least a few worrisome scenarios. For starters, unsavory characters like stalkers and burglars could figure out your home address from photos uploaded to a social networking site. If that’s not bad enough, they could then wait until you’re on vacation or on a business trip (which folks tend to indicate while still away) and rob your empty home.

Now here’s the good news:
1. Many sites strip out the EXIF geotag information when users upload images.
2. One of the sites that does strip out that information is Facebook.
3. While Flickr and Picasa do offer options to download originals of uploaded images, which may include EXIF geotag data, the default option is to keep this information private.
4. Users can deactivate geotagging functionality in their smartphones with these clicks in the settings menu.

So, in a nutshell, there’s no need to panic and immediately delete every photo you ever posted online. Depending on the device used to take photos and the website to which the images were uploaded, geotagging may be a non-issue. But the reality is a lot of information people assume to be inaccessible is actually very easy to find. I never cease to be amazed by how much personal information a total stranger can gather about someone, using only publicly accessible internet resources, with relatively little effort. I always advocate using common sense, and eliminating unnecessary risk whenever possible. While the risk is very small that your house is going to be robbed by someone who sees photos you’re posting to Facebook while still on vacation, I recommend waiting until you get home to post the photos.

A number of the major mobile phone service providers offer “family locator” products which give parents the ability to see the real time location of their child on interactive maps they can view on the computer or smart phone. Parents can also define locations or areas, and receive updates when their children arrive at or depart from those locations, or enter/exit pre-set boundaries. Verizon and Sprint each offer “family locator” products, which cost between $5 and $10 a month, and are easy to set up, use and maintain.

AshleyMadison.com, a personals website with the telling slogan “Life is short, have an affair”, has iPhone and Blackberry applications designed to help married people find partners without leaving a trace of the affair on work or home computers.

So if you suspect your spouse is cheating and see the AshleyMadison.com app on his or her phone, you should consider your suspicions confirmed.

TigerText reminds me of the self-destructing messages in the movie Mission Impossible. The way it works is that when you send an iPhone or BlackBerry message via TigerText, the recipient will be prompted to install the app in order to read the message. The message then disappears after a predetermined length of time so a suspicious spouse won’t be able to read it later. Without this digital evidence of an affair, suspecting spouses will have to resort to other investigative methods like GPS tracking or good, old-fashioned surveillance to trap their cheating spouses.

Have an accomplice. Paul Young helped facilitate and hide the affair in a number of ways. From booking hotel rooms under his name to falsely claiming paternity of Edwards’ and Hunter’s love child, he was the perfect accomplice (until he wrote his tell-all book, that is).

Don’t call your lover with your regular cell phone. Incriminating text messages and call logs have been the downfall of many adulterers, most recently Tiger Woods. Edwards cleverly bought a cell phone that he used exclusively to talk to Hunter. He would then hand off the phone to Young so that Elizabeth could never stumble upon it. He and Hunter would also dial into three-way conference calls, scheduled by Young, so there would be no trace of her phone number on his call log.

Don’t leave written evidence. After the birth of their love child, Edwards sent Hunter flowers, but did not sign the card in his name in case someone saw it.

Don’t use your credit card. A credit card statement can be essentially a diary of a sloppy adulterer’s affair. When Edwards started paying Hunter’s living expenses, he made sure to send her cash and her own credit card through Young. He even managed to avoid using his own funds, funneling her money from wealthy campaign donor Bunny Mellon through an elaborate cover-up.

The most prominent recent example is Tiger Woods: After allegedly carrying on secret affairs with numerous women over several years, he was finally undone by text messages sent to Rachel Uchitel, the first mistress to be unveiled. A friend of hers told the National Enquirer about the affair, claiming she had seen incriminating text messages. The published rumors likely led to Tiger’s fight with his wife, Elin Nordegren, and subsequent car accident. For further embarrassment, another one of Tiger’s mistresses, Jaimee Grubbs, then gave illicit text messages incriminating Tiger to US Weekly, which then published them.

Most cheating spouses probably don’t have to worry about their “sext” messages being published in a tabloid magazine, but this story should still send shivers down a texting adulterer’s spine. It’s clear that as with emails, text messages can be retrieved. Even if both the sender and receiver delete the incriminating text message from their phone, communications providers like AT&T and Verizon store them for up to a few weeks.

According to this article in the New York Times, text messages are now considered proof of an affair in a court of law. Although cell phones are considered private property, if a cheating spouse’s cell phone is part of a family calling plan or often left unlocked and unattended around the house, a suspecting partner could legally be justified in checking the messages.