Guide
What your photos quietly tell people
The short answer
Most photos carry EXIF metadata: GPS coordinates accurate to a few metres, the exact time, the camera or phone model and its serial number, and often the settings and software used. Anyone who receives the original file can read all of it in a couple of clicks.
By FixMyFiles Updated How we write these
What is actually in there
Location. If location services were on for the camera, the file holds latitude, longitude and often altitude. That is usually precise enough to identify a building, not just an area.
Time. The capture timestamp, frequently with the time zone, which tells a reader where in the world you were as surely as the coordinates do.
Device. Make, model, lens, and on many cameras a body serial number that links every photo you have ever posted to the same camera.
Edits. The software used, and sometimes a thumbnail generated *before* your edits — which has occasionally revealed the uncropped version of a cropped photo.
Who sees it and who does not
Large social platforms strip most metadata when they re-encode an upload, so a photo posted to Instagram or Facebook usually arrives clean. That is a side effect of their processing, not a promise, and it does not apply to the copy they keep.
Everything else generally passes it straight through: email attachments, chat apps that send "as a file" or "as a document", cloud links, forums, marketplace listings, and anything you upload to a small site.
Reading it needs no skill. Right-click → Properties on Windows, Get Info on a Mac, or any of dozens of free viewers.
When it is worth stripping
Selling something online, posting from home, sharing a photo of a child, anything involving an address, and any picture attached to a pseudonymous account. In each case the location and timestamp say more than the picture does.
Remove metadata deletes GPS, camera identifiers and timestamps while leaving the pixels untouched — no re-encode, no quality loss. It runs in your browser, which matters here more than anywhere: uploading a photo to a website to remove its location data means handing that location data to the website.
Keep the original if the metadata is useful to you. Capture dates are what photo libraries sort by, and stripping them from your own archive is a thing people regret.
Questions
Does screenshotting a photo remove the metadata?
It removes the original EXIF, yes, but it also re-encodes the picture and usually drops the resolution. Stripping the metadata properly keeps the quality.
Does WhatsApp remove EXIF data?
Sending a photo the normal way re-encodes it and drops most metadata. Sending it "as a document" keeps the file exactly as it is, metadata included.
Can I remove only the location and keep the date?
Yes — Remove Metadata lets you choose what goes, so you can drop GPS while keeping the capture date your photo library sorts by.