Instagram users can probably see where you live – location tagged photos give it away

Social media can be awesome, but it can also be a reason for concern – and in this case, a reason to check your settings to see if you might be inadvertently sharing your home address.

While you may not have been publishing your home address or work location directly, the sheer number of photos you take or post while at home might be a dead giveaway.

Reason to be concerned? What happens when you post a photo of you and the family up at MovieWorld on the Gold Coast – a potential thief knows you’re away and can almost pinpoint your home location ready to check it out.

Here’s how to check, and remove location from some or all of your posts, and then how to disable it for good.

Firstly, Open Instagram, and go to your profile page

Then look for the little pinpoint icon which will take you to the map.

The map will be wide, but show clumps of photos.  Clicking on each grouping of photos will dive closer in and the way people will work out how to find you is look for the largest group of photos.  There’s no doubting I live in Sydney – but my actual home location is not tagged at all.

Zoom to the level you want to edit

Then click EDIT up the top right of screen

Click on any group of photos shown and then choose EDIT

In this case a group of photos from a recent holiday.  A popup will appear of all the pictures in that group, each with a TICK on them

Click DESELECT ALL to remove the Geo-Tagging of the photo

Click DONE and confirm the removal of the GeoTags

Hey presto – they’re gone from the map!

If you want to remove ALL your geotagged photos, zoom right out in the map

Click EDIT

Then once again deselect all and confirm:

 

Perhaps if you’re going to that extreme, you might be best permanently disabling the location sharing on Instagram by delving into your phone settings.

Do this in SETTINGS, PRIVACY, LOCATION SERVICES and choose Instagram.