Benjamin Strick Profile picture
Investigations Director @Cen4infoRes. Past BBC & @Bellingcat. Tutorials: https://t.co/jwll4Af0ax. OSINT/GEOINT. Views = own.

Jan 28, 2020, 6 tweets

So @officialmcafee posted a little challenge. It's always nice to do a little geolocation challenge that doesn't revolve around conflict.
Location is: goo.gl/maps/YyMRLqMEF…

I thought I'd include my working out here, as a lot of people seem to ask about geolocation ✌️

First, the fuel station. From the profile's Twitter timeline we can tell he is traveling toward London and is in Europe. So Googling "service stations in Europe" gives an easy win there.

Next - observe activity of timeline. Profile provides information that subject is traveling to London. Where from? In a tweet from the 26th the hotel name "Hotel Schlicken" is present. A suggested path can be made from there to London. google.com/maps/dir/Hotel…

Then commence search. In the image, there is no suburban buildup in the background and there is a truck. So likely a regional highway service station. Searching "Esso" on Google Maps gives likely results - correlate these with direction of travel and we narrow down the list.

Last - geolocation (confirmation of location). Features are unique to satellite imagery of service station in Baden-Baden, here: goo.gl/maps/LyrQ3yxan….

Also niche features of Google Map's geotagged images match such as the flowers, pipe taping and brickwork of the Esso service station in Baden-Baden. google.com/maps/place/Ess…

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