Posting on social media? AI may help others track your location
2026-08-17
India Today
The information displayed in the AIM should not be reported as representing the official views of the OECD or of its member countries.
McAfee Labs found that AI models like Google's Gemma 3 and Alibaba's Qwen 3 can accurately identify locations in 87–91% of travel photos, even without GPS data. Scammers exploit this AI capability to personalize phishing attacks, raising privacy and cybersecurity risks for social media users worldwide.[AI generated]
Why's our monitor labelling this an incident or hazard?
The article explicitly states that AI models (Google's Gemma 3 27B and Alibaba's Qwen 3 VL 30B) were used to identify photo locations with high accuracy, which can be exploited by scammers to create more convincing personalized phishing attacks. This misuse of AI directly contributes to harm to individuals by enabling fraud, a form of harm to communities and individuals. The AI system's role is pivotal in enabling this new level of personalized scams. Hence, this qualifies as an AI Incident under the definition of harm (e) other significant harms where AI's role is pivotal.[AI generated]