Your Cute Cat Videos Could Be Showing Strangers Your Location: Funny Feline Pictures Targeted By 'I Know Where Your Cat Lives', Some Instagram and Twitter Users Revealing Too Much

Are you a frequent cat picture Instagrammer or Tweeter? Then chances are you could be revealing a little more than you intended when you post a picture of your feline to your followers.

A Florida State University professor has put together a website that shows the location where various cute and funny cat photos were snapped - with an estimated 7.8 meters (approximately 25.5 feet) accuracy.

"I Know Where Your Cat Lives" is a data experiment from Owen Mundy, which uses the longitude and latitude coordinates embedded in the metadata of one million public pictures of cats to place them on a world map. The cat pics were accessed via publicly available APIs (application programming interface) provided by sites like Twitpic (a popular service for sharing images on Twitter), Instagram and Flickr.

"This project explores two uses of the internet: the sociable and humorous appreciation of domesticated felines, and the status quo of personal data usage by startups and international megacorps who are riding the wave of decreased privacy for all," said Owen Mundy.

"This website doesn't visualize all of the cats on the net, only the ones that allow you to track where their owners have been."

"I Know Where Your Cat Lives" raises an interesting point about the privacy settings web users employ when they're out and about on social media. If a user's profile is public, it's all too easy for anyone to casually come along and see where they've been, should the posting of the user's location be enabled with their video and picture updates.

"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," said the New York Times.

The "I Know Where Your Cat Lives" website states that if users wish to remove their furry friend's face from the line-up, they have the right to do so - by increasing the privacy settings on their Twitter and Instagram pictures to ensure they aren't publicly available.