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:
- Right-click on the file
- Properties
- Details
- Remove properties and personal information
Lots of people don’t care, but I guess this could be useful for some of you.
Alternatively, you can (probably should) decide to not upload any photo to social media.
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.
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!
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.
Sure, but let’s say you don’t allow Facebook to track your location. Well, as soon as you upload a photo with location exif data, they know it anyway.
Yeah that’s true but in this scenario it’s your fault, not theirs.
They know the location data in the photo, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s your current location.
Bonus points for faking that data (with, e.g., exiftool).
This. Literally every social media site strips EXIF data from photos you post or else you would be hearing about 100x the number of doxxes you do these days. This tip would’ve been good in 2006 or if you’re communicating over something unusual like Email or Onionshare
Frankly I would extend that distrust to this little miscrosoft button too. With no proof or alternative in mind, it just feels like that button would feed the data to an AI before deleting it.
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.
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.
I mean, I’d probably do it server-side even if I were to have nefarious intent and want the data for myself anyway, since image processing client-side isn’t necessarily a good use of your users devices, really.
Plus, if I were to want the data in a client-side, I could upload it before doing the client-side stripping.
This comment doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny, my friend
Calling deleting metadata image processing is a bit of a stretch. And you can disingenuously clean images either client- or server-side, that’s true, but if we’re getting serious here about data privacy, one could independently validate, build, and sign an executable for users to run locally. I don’t know of any similar technique to guarantee what’s running server-side.
You can strip exit data in less than 1ms on a phone processor in 90 lines of js btw https://github.com/Coteh/exifremove/blob/master/src/exifremove.js
You’re delusional if you think FAANGs don’t harvest the shit out of every single but of data they can get on you, including exif.
For linux I use exiftool
exiftool -all= image.jpgthank you for the linux command!
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)?
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.
For iPhone you can make a simple shortcut to do this. Here’s what it would look like:
Thanks for that. I’ve made one exactly as you describe. Anyone can download it here https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/9adfbc6f62084faa81fbe5da71515a7b
You guys are uploading personal photos to social media?!
That’s how 99% of social media works
Terrible idea. Hopefully it never catches on or we’re all in deep shit.
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
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.
Scrambled Exif has served me well.
Most sites strip metadata thankfully.
Yes, but the company could still keep the data somewhere.
True, but I was thinking of this as someone else viewing the photo seeing the metadata.
If they pay a data broker the company is partnered with - they can.
Linux:
exiftool -overwrite_original -all= ~/Downloads/your_photo.jpgehhh
Screenshot
Paste Screenshot
Works on all platforms
Apple puts a little exif data in there, but it’s not very useful data.
I haven’t looked into this, but if it doesn’t already, Lemmy and PieFed should scrub this data before writing it to disk. Would be a lot easier to implement this in one place than teach everyone to scrub the data themselves. If either of them don’t do that, we should put up a feature request.
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.
most social media sites already do that for you . Unless you upload the image as a document, most media sites automatically remove the exif and compress the img.
Bots including Mark Zuckerberg is going to keep all your data before “doing that for you”.
Or just don’t.
