Owen Mundy, a Florida State University professor who studies the relationship between data and public, developed a cat-locating site that can find where a cat in a picture posted on the Internet is located.
The site, called “I Know Where Your Cat Lives,” works as a directional map with pictures of cats pinned on it to show where the cat was located for each particular picture. In other words, it does not necessarily show where the cat lives, but rather where it was at the time the photo was taken.
The app is not designed for people to solely find where cats are. According to the professor, it has a bigger purpose and meaning behind it. Mundy wrote that he created this site to “explore the status quo of personal data usage by startups and international megacorps who are riding the wave of decreased privacy for all.”
Some cat pictures give a hint of where the owner is as well, so Mundy developed this app to warn people about the lack of privacy on the Internet. These photos can be used everywhere in ways that the owners or uploaders cannot even imagine.
Of course, Mundy’s intent was not to surveil cat owners, so his website allows for the removal of the pictures “by increasing the privacy settings of the photos of your furry feline friends. Then within 30 days your photos will be gone from our site.”
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