What's hiding in your photos
EXIF (Exchangeable Image File) metadata is a block of data your camera or phone embeds inside every JPEG. A typical phone photo contains:
- GPS coordinates — often accurate to a few metres
- Camera make, model and serial number
- Exact capture timestamp — down to the second
- Software used, exposure settings, sometimes the photographer's name
None of this is visible when you look at the photo. All of it travels with the file when you email it, attach it to a listing, or drop it in a shared folder.
Why it's worth removing
Three everyday cases:
- Selling things online. A photo of your couch or your car is also a photo of your home address, taken at a time when you're presumably not there.
- Sharing photos of children. School runs, playgrounds, holidays — the location stamps build a routine out of ordinary pictures.
- Anything professional. Freelancers, journalists and activists send documents with photos attached; metadata identifies people and places they never chose to reveal.
How to remove EXIF data — three ways
1. The free way, right here (a few seconds per photo)
- Open the free EXIF stripper.
- Drop your photo in. The tool lists exactly which metadata segments it found.
- Click strip and save the clean copy. Pixels are untouched — it's a byte-for-byte copy of the image with only the metadata segments removed, so there's no quality loss.
The whole thing runs inside the web page: no upload, no account. Disconnect your Wi-Fi and it still works — that's the test.
2. Before sharing from your phone
On iPhone, tapping the share sheet's Options button lets you send a copy without location. Android's Google Photos has a similar Remove photo location. Good habits — but they only cover the apps that support them, and they usually leave camera and timestamp data in place.
3. The download, for folders of photos
The €5 EXIF / GPS Stripper is the same tool without the daily limit — drop in a whole folder, get clean copies, no internet needed.
What platforms already strip — and what they don't
Big social platforms (WhatsApp, Instagram, X) strip most EXIF when you upload through their apps. But plenty of routes don't: email attachments, cloud-share links, forum uploads, marketplace listings that serve your original file, and any file sent directly by messenger documents or AirDrop. If you're sending the original file anywhere, assume the metadata travels with it.