The hack to disable the data mining is to remove or change the camera info from your EXIF details before uploading your images.

yeah. remove the EXIF. not that difficult. no more so than crafting your foil hat every morning.

Your camera info, along with quite a bit of data like F-stop, exposure length... stuff like that... is encoded into the image file.

why would one not be creeped out by the idea that their PICTURES are available to anyone on the internet, as compared to their camera model?

yah, wuppity do, I bet that the government will use your camera model data to track you, and implant chips in your brain...???

also, shocked that the razr wasn't in the top cellphones used list... just seems like it would be because of it's ubiquitousness

wow, got to use ubiquitousness in a post, t3h s3ckz

The more concerning thing is in a couple years when there will be GPS metadata on the pics making flickr a stalkers paradise

Go a540!

Tin foil hat indeed.

removing the exif data, or at least

Removing EXIF data from a file (at least the data that is specific to your particular camera) will require you to use an application that will let you edit that metadata. Just as an fyi, you can ADD data to IPTC fields without any special software by right clicking on the file and choosing properties, then clicking on the summary tab. From there you can change much of the IPTC data (title, subject, keywords, etc.) but not the file and camera data. You'll need an application such as Fotostation (one example) to edit this data.

This is pretty old news. The new bit is that Flickr is aggregating it publicly themselves.

The information has been available from third parties for a while. http://www.mobile-weblog.com/50226711/flickr_most_popular_...

The idea of analyzing it for marketing purposes was discussed here a year ago.http://changewaves.socialtechnologies.com/home/2006/6/9/mining-the-social-web.html

Removing that data carries a cost.

Lots of software is Exif savvy, and auto rotates the images for you. Ironically Flickr was a bit late implementing that time saving feature - compaered to other software I use.

I'm sorry but you're not going to get me scared about EXIF data... This is ancient.

Pretty cool feature if you ask me. I don't see the data in EXIF a privacy violation at all. It is helpful as an amature to see what lens and various camera settings people use to get their shots. The GPS feature is the part that would worry me _if_ I had no control over it but I need to add it per photo myself.

i'm not creeped out at all XD

One of the reasons this is a no starter is because every single picture uploaded to flickr since its inception has included the EXIF info for the camera type on the page with the picture. Visit any photo page (hey, you could look at this one http://flickr.com/photos/davidschloss/299111214/) and on the right hand side it says under "Additional Information" "Taken with a x" where X is the EXIF for the camera.

So, if we were really concerned with flickr aggregating the data for privacy shouldn't we have been concerned all along? Seems like tying a camera directly to the photo is more likely to give away personal info than showing what cameras the flickr users select as an aggregate.

djdare- I just checked and the Razr is displayed at "Motorola 1.3 Megapixel" on a photo page (I uploaded a RAZR shot the other day). I have a Motorola V3m, which doesn't show up on Flickr's list. So I'm pretty sure the flickr count of Razr phones is broken.

If you seriously think Canon, Nikon and Sony et al already dont have access to a good bit of this data based on sales figures and other standard marketing methods, you need to go back to the 19th century and your pin-hole camera. Even if sites like flickr didnt post/aggregate this data, most digital images contain EXIF data that can be read by any number of image viewers.

Why is this creepy? It's nice to be able to see which cameras are being used to take the shots in the "real world" that I find most compelling.

Hey, did you know that if you park your car in your driveway or on the street, ANYONE CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT MODEL CAR YOU OWN?

Seriously, stop being paranoid.

EXIF Data is useful to people who are curious as to how and what setting a photographer used to achieve a shot. Why should it be a worry if Flickr is collecting camera info? So does Pbase.com.

If you're really concerned about removing your precious EXIF info, save from Photoshop using the "Save for Web" option, which strips the JPG off all the extra info.

I actually really like that feature in Flickr... Seeing particular types of shots and the types of people who shot them helps me decide on whether or not I want to spend money on that camera (i.e. if some doofus managed to snap a million dollar night shot without a tripod, etc, I know that he may have used an camera possibly worth buying).

As for the GPS thing, Flickr users have the OPTION to geotag the location of where they shot particular photos (though it seems like sort of a pain).

They've been collecting camera data for over a year now, just from the EXIF metadata. You can always choose to not display this information, and as long as they're just presenting information in aggregate it seems like a win. I'd be much more concerned about the content of the pictures than the EXIF data.

Now if they mysteriously began auto-geotagging, I'd start to be concerned.

Another unnerving bit of information is if you have registered your camera (at least with Canon), Flickr some-how cross references the serial number of you camera in the EXIF file with the Canon data base and will display the registered users name along with all the other standard EXIF data.

three things...
1) i like being able to look at what people are using. it would be cool to search for pictures taken by a particular camera if i was pondering getting one. i realize the images may be photoshopped, but i could even ask the photographer for a real person's feeling on the thing.

2) my Moto E815 cell phone also gets tagged as "Motorola 1.3 Megapixel", so i assume i have the same basic camera guts as the RAZR and many other current Moto phones. it is interesting to see how much better some cellphone's optics are. proof that megapixels are not everything.

3) GPS metadata would be a lot creepier, or totally awesome. depends on the situation and if i remembered to remove it when i wanted to be stealthy (or just at home).

Flickr, the popular photo sharing Web site bought out by Yahoo! some months ago [...]

I suppose 20 months ago can still technically be categorized as "some".     ; )

This... Is... Not... News.

Flickr has been pulling your camera's model for a LOOOONG time. Haven't you ever even noticed on the right-hand side of flickr how it'll show your (or anyone else's) camera model? Yippy, they added a graph, time to go put on my tin foil hat.

Guess what, people that are into sharing their photos publicly probably could care less that their camera's model has been put into a graph.

Heck, the 20d puts your NAME in the exif data.

/assuming you bothered to fill out that field on the camera.