[sneela]

I agree with other comments that this research treads a fine, unethical line. Did the authors responsibly disclose this, as is often done in the security research community? I cannot find any mention of it in the paper. The researchers seem to be involved in security-related research (first author is doing a PhD, last author holds a PhD).

At least arxiv could have run the cleaner [1] before the print of this pre-print (lol). If there was no disclosure, then I think this pre-print becomes unethical to put up.

> leading to the identification of nearly 1,200 images containing sensitive metadata. The types of data represented vary significantly. While device information (e.g., the camera used) or software details (such as the exact version of Photoshop) may already raise concerns, in over 600 cases the metadata contained GPS coordinates, potentially revealing the precise location where a photo was taken. In some instances, this could expose a researcher’s home address (when tied to a profile picture) or the location of research facilities (when images capture experimental equipment)

Oof, that's not too great.

[1] https://github.com/google-research/arxiv-latex-cleaner

[michaelmior]

Having arXiv run the cleaner automatically would definitely be cool. Although I've found it non-trivial to get working consistently for my own papers. That said, it would be nice if this was at least an option.

[cycomanic]

Leaks of read/write access to documents and GitHub, Dropbox etc credentials is certainly worrying, but location and author/photographer details in photo metadata? That's quite a stretch, and seems like the authors here are just trying to boost the numbers.

The vast majority (I would wager >(100 - 1e-4)) of location of research institutions is public knowledge and can be found out by simply googling the institution address (I am not aware of a single research institution that publishes publically where the location is confidential).

[calvinmorrison]

They responsibly disclosed it in their research paper. An unethical use would be to use those coordinates to gain state secrets about say, research facilities