What the Internet Can See From Your Cat Pictures

Using cat pictures -- that essential building block of the Internet -- and a supercomputer, Owen Mundy, an assistant professor of art at Florida State University, built a site that shows the locations of the cats (at least at some point in time, given their nature) and, presumably, of their owners.

His site displays random images from a sample of one million of what Mundy estimates are at least 15 million pictures tagged with the word “cat” online. The images are displayed on a map using satellite imagery, with nearby cat photos also visible. Specific street addresses are not displayed, but the geographic information can leave few details to the imagination in rural areas.

The lesson for people who share pictures online, whether it’s kittens or your children, is this: If you include more metadata than you have to with your photos, don’t be surprised if it’s used online in ways you didn’t expect and can’t fully control.