Geotag Bomb Scare in the 'Burbs

By Sean Stillmaker in News on Sep 12, 2010 6:00PM

Shoppers and employees at a Menards store in Riverwoods were evacuated Saturday evening due to a bomb scare after an employee spotted somebody in the parking lot placing cylindrical tubes around a light post. The employee went to confront the white male, but he immediately sped off in his car. The employee thought it could be an explosive device so the Cook County bomb squad was called, the Daily Herald reports. Upon examination they found nearly a dozen geotags inside the tubes. This is the first incidence of geotagging that area police have dealt with.

Geotags are location beacons placed on objects for people to track as part of an online hide-and-seek game. Geotagging became popular when it was introduced on Twitter and has now grown bigger with it being implemented through Facebook Places. People can play the geotag game or just update friends of their exact latitude and longitude location.

However, smartphone users can be geotagged without them even knowing. Any pictures or messages sent via a phone with GPS locater technology imbeds metadata to all correspondence. Big brother can scan photos and pinpoint the exact geolocation, or if you’re on foursquare striving to be that mayor you can be traced in real time.

The security breaching technology is becoming a big concern for parents. Teenagers gravitate to cell phones constantly snapping pictures and updating statuses, but a message about a parental free home can be tagged with an exact address. A parental guidance application that monitors kid’s Facebook activity is coming out with location monitoring in its November model, the Seattle Times reports.