What if you sold your camera and it ended up disclosing the most intimate details of your personal life in spite of your confidence that you had deleted any embarrassing pictures and movies that you may have taken? You might have heard the story of the man who sold his digital camera in a yard sale only to see previously erased 'bedroom pictures' recovered and shown to lots of people. I don't know whether his boss was one of them but imagine if you were a health care professional, a teacher, a local community leader - those sort of photos could cause you an amazing amount of problems.
Facebook has personal privacy settings. We could modify them and limit, to some degree, who can see our photographs and personal information. But have you ever considered your digital camera? Modern cameras are more than just image recording gadgets. Some can record sound and video along with still images. Lots of modern cameras can record location info through the use of Global Positioning Satellites.
Exactly what lots of people have no idea about is that the removable memory cards that fit inside cameras do not delete the photos you've taken when you press the 'Delete' button (or however it's labeled on your camera). This video (which is a little tongue-in-cheek) shows you exactly how it's possible for someone to recover previously erased photographs (and movies) from a deleted, formatted memory card:
What he does is worrying, isn't it!
You see when we push that button we believe we are erasing our pictures. What actually happens is that it's marked as being erased (rather than actually being erased). The camera viewscreen never shown it to you again but it stays on the memory card for an indefinite period of time. Sitting there, waiting to be 'un-erased' by anyone with the right software.
Most of the time this is fine. Few of us take photographs that could affect our jobs or lives. But there's a trend amongst teenagers and couples to spice up their sex lives by making their own very explicit pictures and videos. If these pictures continue to be exclusive, within a happy relationship, it's difficult to see any problem. However consider what happens if the images become public property or are found by friends, relatives or bosses?
Looking after our digital privacy is something we need to become more wise about in our electronically co-joined world. Are you confident that you can get rid of images and videos from a camera memory card?
Would you like to see how simple it is for someone to recover a long ago deleted photograph from a memory card? This video will show you:
It's potentially frightening and extends past anything you might get up to in the bed room. Digital data is everywhere and the method of un-deleting shown in the video applies equally to company secrets, patient information, confidential papers and reports and messages from loved ones. The ubiquitousness of flash memory chips in modern gadgets suggests that having a personal life may be something we've lost forever.
Further Reading: consider why you need to protect digital information. Is it for yourself, your clients, your job or all of the above? That will give you a direction - do you talk to your IT department or make a trip to the local bookstore to browse around the computer section for titles about protecting your privacy?
There's an article on the photography.incyder.info website that gives the links to the software that was used in the video above (don't worry, it's free). Click here to read it (it has full instructions and more advanced information than that found in the video.
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