I really love Instagram.  I always overthink while I’m writing, so I never really took to Twitter.   Facebook is great for keeping up with family and friends, but Instagram is perfect for documenting my training adventures and finding my tribe.  I think in pictures and I love to capture my everyday life.  I love that I can share a quick image and summarize my workouts.  It’s a great way to quickly see how far I’ve come.

I joined as a SweatPink Ambassador last year because I was inspired by #SweatPink hashtag and I wanted to join in the fun.    I quickly followed many accounts listed on the FB page and many followed me back; many were open accounts and some were set to private.  I followed private accounts that had engaged in my content.  I left my account open because I love participating in challenges and pushing myself outside of my boundaries.  I’ve even participated in a few campaigns.  I’ve made some awesome Insta-Friends in the last year from similar interests, races or ambassadorships; we’ve even met IRL!  While I don’t have a ton of followers, I still don’t know everyone personally.  It was high time to double check my account.

Honestly, I thought I had a good handle on my Instagram Privacy settings.  I was set to “Allow Location access while using the app.”

I would only tag my location occasionally and I thought I was good. I thought my location was shared only when I typed and specified the location.

That’s not true!  I found out the other night that many of my photos were automatically added to my photo map — even if I didn’t type a location.

This is after I cleaned up my photo map.

EEEK!  I looked at my profile and clicked my photo map icon and saw a majority of my photos had been geotagged even though I didn’t type in the location.  Oh IG, you are just a little sly, sneaking past me.

“Keep in mind that after you’ve added a photo to your map, the next time you share a photo it will automatically be added to your photo map. You can turn off this setting any time by deselecting Add to Photo Map before you share a photo.” – From:  Controlling your visibility on Instagram

Thankfully, you can remove photos that have been geotagged, by using the “Edit” option in the photo map.

I’ve noticed that some IG users utilize the location bar to highlight other content or to add their website.  Even though you are not linking to a listed location, this action puts a pin in your current location.

View this post on Instagram

Lifetime Tri Tempe Training Week1 is on the blog! (check profile) #triathlontraining #ResultsStartHere #committotri #trainingpeaks #sweatpink #lifetimetritempe @lifetimetri

A post shared by Olivia S (@balancingmommy) on Jul 8, 2015 at 11:54am PDT

Before I removed the geotag.

 

You can see that I uploaded this post while I was in the gym parking lot.

I’m still going to tag my location in IG.  I’m just going to be more diligent about deselecting the “Add to Photo map” option if I’m at home or a location I don’t want to share.