Smartphones are all the rage right now and many use them to take and store photos of their family and friends. But did you know that posting those pictures online could put your loved ones at risk?

According to an NBC report out of Missouri, parents who take photos of their kids on their smartphones and then upload them onto sites like Twitter or Facebook are giving everyone out there in the worldwide web the opportunity to find their children.

Because of the GPS systems installed in smartphones, the photos you take can be pinpointed to exact locations through free and easily downloadable applications.

Take a picture of your five-year-old at the park and place it on Facebook and you have just given hackers the exact location of where that park is. These same apps can pinpoint where you live, your child’s daycare and pretty much any other information stored inside of your phone.

By doing something as simple as uploading photos on Photobucket or other sites, you are giving the bad guys all the information they need to find out where you live, work, play and even what restaurants you eat in. 

There are ways to disable the geo-tracking on your smartphones. You must go to the GPS setting and turn it off on photos you plan to post online. While this is a simple step, it is one that most of us don’t think about when utilizing all of our phone’s capabilities.

Technology makes our lives easier and in this fast-paced world smartphones help us take care of business in a more organized and judicious manner. However, with so much information stored on our phones, we need to be more astute about how these phones work and how to keep our families safe.

Who knew that sharing a photo of your child playing at the park with your Facebook friends could potentially endanger them?

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