Photo Metadata (EXIF) and Privacy: What Your Pictures Reveal

EXIF is a block of information stored inside an image file. It commonly holds the date and time, the camera or phone model, exposure settings, the orientation of the picture, and, if location services are on, the GPS coordinates where it was taken.

A photo taken at home with location on can reveal where you live. A picture of a child, a parcel or a valuable item, shared without being stripped, can give away more than you intend. Some people have been located from pictures shared online this way.

Many large social platforms remove location data from public posts, but you should not assume that, and messaging apps, email attachments and file shares often keep it.

On iPhone, go to Settings, Privacy and Security, Location Services, Camera, and choose Never. On Android, open the camera settings and switch off location tags. New pictures will then not carry GPS data.

Re-encoding a picture, as happens when it is converted or compressed in the browser, writes a new file from the pixels and generally does not carry the original camera data across. If privacy matters, check a few results with a metadata viewer before you rely on it, since behavior can differ between tools.

Converting in the browser also means the file is never uploaded to a server, so there is no copy sitting somewhere else.

Not all metadata is bad. The orientation tag is what tells a viewer that a photo should be rotated. If a picture looks sideways after you share it, rotate it and save it again so it is correct everywhere.