this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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You Should Know

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Your photos might include information of the exact location and time of the photo taken, your photo/camera models etc. Companies, governments, or someone with bad intentions can use such information for their benefits against you. This can easily be accessed by AI as well.

On Windows 11:

  1. Right-click on the file
  2. Properties
  3. Details
  4. Remove properties and personal information

Lots of people don't care, but I guess this could be useful for some of you.

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[–] kepix@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

any of you allow gps for your photo app?

[–] MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

I was at a restaurant earlier this year, and I actually saw someone take a picture of their food, screen shot that picture, and send it on their messaging app of choice. Was so cool seeing it happen in person in my tiny town, and not just in the big cities or the internet

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Most sites strip metadata thankfully.

[–] iglou@programming.dev 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, but the company could still keep the data somewhere.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

True, but I was thinking of this as someone else viewing the photo seeing the metadata.

[–] Shayeta@feddit.org 2 points 6 hours ago

If they pay a data broker the company is partnered with - they can.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 10 points 1 day ago

Linux:

exiftool -overwrite_original -all= ~/Downloads/your_photo.jpg
[–] masto@lemmy.masto.community 7 points 1 day ago

There are a million ways to do this, as have already been described in other comments. This is one more. I built https://photostripper.com/ a while back, when I was practicing building small web applications to learn different tech stacks. Lemmy is not the target audience - you folks know how to do this already, and why would you trust that I’m not keeping copies of your photos (I promise I’m not, but what is that worth?)

Anyway, I’m only mentioning it because it’s my thing and I enjoyed making it.

[–] backgroundcow@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I discovered that recent versions of the built-in photo apps on Android flat out refuses to do this. The UI for removing location info is there, but it is intentionally blocked if the exif info was added automatically by GPS (i.e., it only works if you manually have set a location). It seems so weird, and outright evil, to block one of the key ways for people to stay safe.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 day ago

Scrambled Exif has served me well.

[–] Quexotic 7 points 1 day ago

https://guardianproject.info/apps/org.witness.sscphase1/

Above you will find the link for an app called a obscure cam. It's open source and made by the Guardian Project. It allows you to sensor faces and automatically removes exaptata from your photos so that you don't put your geolocation on dating apps.

If all of the Tea users used this, that breach wouldn't be even a quarter as bad. Also would help if they didn't post their fn drivers license to a dating app.

[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 126 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Alternatively, you can (probably should) decide to not upload any photo to social media.

[–] null@lemmy.nullspace.lol 7 points 1 day ago (20 children)

That would destroy the majority of Lemmy though

[–] Sunsofold@lemmings.world 10 points 1 day ago

The data is different for a 'photo' one took vs one of many other types of image. Your camera/phone can often include a lot of surprising data, possibly even your PII or location. An image you made in krita or with a screenshotting tool is somewhat less likely to have such data.

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago

ehhh

Screenshot

Paste Screenshot

Works on all platforms

Apple puts a little exif data in there, but it's not very useful data.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 54 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Every social-media platform strips EXIF metadata before publishing the photo.

So the issue is the trustworthiness of the social-media platform itself. Personally I always strip the metadata before sharing anything anywhere.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago

While this is true, especially with all the Palintir tracking stuff and the insatiable thirst for data to market, it's far more valuable now than ever to the platform. The platform is happy to keep it and sell it to marketers who will share it for you.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 day ago

Strips metadata so that the public can't see it, isn't the same as stripping metadata after the corporation has already collected and linked it to your profile. 😫

Always clean the metadata BEFORE it touches their upload UI.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 22 points 1 day ago

Of course they strip it before publishing and of course they use the stripped data for themselves. Anyone assuming that they won't should come and buy that bridge that I'm selling, it's a great opportunity!

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[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You guys are uploading personal photos to social media?!

[–] _thisdot 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That's how 99% of social media works

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

Terrible idea. Hopefully it never catches on or we're all in deep shit.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

pfft- yeah right. What, it's populated by a bunch of ignorant twits who were never told any better by even ignoranter twits? I don't think so

[–] qarbone@lemmy.world 53 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Feels like an honorable site would make the uploader aware of this and offer a checkbox or something to do it for you.

Every site that allows image upload in existence now strips this data by default, but they do it on their server so they can get it first.

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

I run it through my 1995-era photo editor that doesn't support all the metadata.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 31 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

For Android, there are e.g.

[–] seathru@lemmy.sdf.org 24 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

For linux I use exiftool

exiftool -all= image.jpg

[–] biofaust@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Can it be made into a Cinnamon extension or even a tool with which I would run it for all new image files while idle (if needed)?

[–] seathru@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago

I'm sure it can. I found several tutorials on how to add it to Dolphin's right click context menu, I just haven't taken the time to do it.

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[–] DBT@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago

For iPhone you can make a simple shortcut to do this. Here’s what it would look like:

[–] oce@jlai.lu 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You should be able to prevent your device from adding the location to your photos. I never felt the need to have it, given the date and the photos around, it is easy to remember where it was.

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