Privacy In Your Pictures

Klon LLC
Klon LLC
Nov 6 · 6 min read

We are fast approaching the holiday season and one thing is certain, there will be a lot of photos taken and shared. But before you upload those photos and share them with the world, especially with people you don’t know, you have to consider the data within your photos that you cannot see with the naked eye. You have to dig into the raw data of your photos to find it. This data is put there by most cameras and if you’re using your cell phone or tablet to capture these moments it can include a number of revealing information. The most invasive of which is the exact GPS coordinates of where the photograph was taken. This data is called EXIF data and today we’re going to take a look at limiting what is input into your photos and how to remove this data completely so you can stay private and secure online.

What is EXIF data?

Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) data is meta data that is recorded and stored within a photo at the moment of capture. This data can help services to categorize and organize your photographs for you so that you can find and recall all of the intricate details. This can be especially helpful for photographers. Within a photo the EXIF data can include things like date and time of capture, the camera, the camera settings, and even the GPS coordinates of the location of the photo.

Fix the leak

So how do you know if your device is leaking this sort of data in every photo and video you take? For this we’ll dive into the latest versions of each major mobile operating system namely Android and iOS 13.

Android

To make it so that your camera isn’t including your GPS coordinates within every photo it is very easy. For the less privacy concerned person who may use other apps that require your location you can choose to only make this change within the camera settings itself by opening your camera, selecting the settings icon and turning off the GPS Location setting as shown below.

That’s it! You’re all set!
However, all of your other apps that have permission will still be able to access your location. Given the nature of those reading this article I will quickly show you how you can shut off location settings in Android which is a very easy process and highly recommended.

  1. Open up your Settings menu.

2. Scroll down to Location.

3. Turn this setting off.

Now you’re all set! Your camera and all of your other apps will no longer be able to access your GPS location and so it will not be placed within your photos.

iOS

To turn off geo-tagging within your photos and videos on iOS follow these simple steps.

  1. Go to Settings

2. Scroll down and select Privacy

3. Select Location Services

4. At this point you have two options. If you are a privacy conscious person and do not want apps on your phone to know your location you can just turn off location services all together which is what I recommend. If you depend on location services for another app then you can just turn off this ability for the camera app itself.

5. If you chose Option 1 and decide to turn off location services you will see the following pop up. Just select turn off and you are all set!

6. If you chose Option 2 you will see the following screen. Simply select “Never” and you are all set. Now your camera cannot access your location and therefore it cannot insert this data into your photos and videos.

Removing EXIF Data From Existing Media

Now that we are not sharing our GPS coordinates with the world through our newly taken photos, how can we remove this data from existing pictures? Well I’m glad you asked. It is really easy to remove this data from your photos but the process varies from operating system to operating system. Note: I will only be discussing this for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu. Mobile operating systems like Android and iOS have apps for removing EXIF data which can be downloaded and used very easily.

Windows

In Windows it is easy to remove most of this data within the file explorer itself although there are some limitations on what can be removed.

Step 1. Select all of the pictures that you want to remove data from then right-click and select Properties from the menu.

Step 2. Click the Details tab on the pane that opens up. Then select the blue text at the bottom that says “Remove Properties and Personal Information

Step 3. A new window will appear. Select the radio button labelled, “Remove the following properties from the files:” Then click “Select All” to remove all of the data. Finally, click “OK” to apply the changes.

Now you’re all set! There will be some small amount of lingering metadata still attached to these images however, If you want to be sure you nuke every last bit of EXIF data I would suggest getting familiar with a tool called ExifTool.

Mac

To remove EXIF data from photos on the Mac operating system we will download and use a very simple to use application called ImageOptim which you can download here.

  1. Once you have downloaded the program open it up.
  2. Now select all of the photos you would like to remove EXIF data from and drag and drop them on the ImageOptim window.

That’s it! Your EXIF data will be removed from the photos and you will notice a smaller filesize.

Linux/Debian/Ubuntu

The tool we will be using to remove data is called ExifTool which should be downloaded from the authors webpage.

  1. Open up a Terminal
  2. Run this command to install ExifTool…
$ sudo apt-get install libimage-exiftool-perl

Now that you have installed the tool you can start to remove EXIF data.

  1. Open a terminal within the directory containing your images that you wish to remove data from.
  2. To remove all EXIF metadata from an image or photo enter the following command in the terminal.
    Note: image.jpeg should be the actual name of your image.
$ exiftool -all= image.jpeg
  1. If you have a lot of images that you want to remove data from you can enter this command to remove data from every image in a given directory…
$ exiftool -all= *

ExifTool will save the original and new versions of your images for you with the original getting a “_original” suffix.

Conclusion

Now you are well equipped to prevent this unnecessary data from being put into your photographs and videos. You should be able to upload and share your media with confidence knowing that the most revealing data resides not deep within the data of the image itself but within the frame of the photograph. Now you have total control over your captured moments.

As always don’t forget to visit Klon today and get started with your free 30-day trial! Protect your personal identity, eliminate spam from your personal inbox, and make signing up and signing in a piece of cake!

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