Metadata Removal

TASK: Try to strip your photos and other files of metadata before you send them across the internet. This is especially important if it is to a cloud service which will analyse that data for onward sale. There are numerous tools to do this depending on your platform. Have a look at this article and the resources page for some ideas. This takes some discipline and a little extra effort.

WHY: Photos and other files you send around the internet have what is called “Metadata” attached to them. For example, you want to send a photo to a friend on email. That photo will contain the the data for the photo itself which takes up the most space and then there well be the metadata associated with the photo. This metadata can include the following: location of photo, device used to take the photo, time and date of photo, camera details and often the account or device user name.

A definition from Wikipedia: "Metadata is "data that provides information about other data",[1] but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself."

This is enough to locate and possibly identify you. It is best to strip this data when sending it across the internet. Facebook, Google and similar companies love metadata as they use it to get a better picture of your location, likes, hardware and other information. This is valuable to advertisers to whom they sell this data.