The photos you snap with modern digital cameras, including the one(s) on your smartphone, often include personal information, such as your location, your camera model, and even names. Known as EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data, or ‘Metadata’, the information is embedded into each image and could compromise your privacy. So to help your enhance your privacy online, we will tell you how to delete metadata from photos and videos before you post them on social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and more.

EXIF data in photos and videos can not only help advertisers track you online, it could also help stalkers and criminals get more information about you. If that sounds scary, fear not, because we will tell you exactly how you can delete metadata from photos and videos before posting them online. We will also tell you about what is metadata and how it can pose a danger to your online privacy if you’re not careful. So without further ado, let’s get cracking.

  • What Is Metadata and Why Should it be Deleted?
  • Delete Image Metadata in Windows 10
  • Delete Image Metadata in Android
  • Disable Geo-tagging in Android

What Is Metadata and Why Should it be Deleted?

The word ‘Metadata’ literally refers to the snippets of data that provide information about other data. Typically, it helps users find relevant information, organize electronic resources and provide digital identification. In case of digital multimedia files, such as audio, video and photographs, it refers to information attached to those files, such as location, device type, date taken, etc. It is, therefore, not difficult to see why it would be prudent to delete image metadata before sharing them online.

How to Delete Metadata From Photos

You can delete metadata from photos on any of the leading desktop and mobile platforms, including Windows, Android, iOS, macOS and Linux. In this  tutorial, we’ll show you how to do it on Windows 10 and Android.

There are plenty of third-party programs that can delete image metadata in Windows 10, but Microsoft also offers a built-in method that is by far the easiest and most convenient. Here’s how you do it:

  • That’s it. You’ve successfully deleted all the selected values from the image. It’s that easy to delete image metadata in Windows 10.

Delete Image Metadata in Android

Unlike in Windows, Android doesn’t offer any built-in option to scrub your photos of EXIF data. However, there are plenty of third-party apps that can remove metadata from photos and videos in Android. For our demo, we will use one of the best and oldest apps in the category, called Photo EXIF Editor.

Note: Once you hit the Save button, the EXIF data will be deleted from the image for good, so backup the photo if you want the data for future reference.

While you cannot prevent all metadata from being attached to photos, you can disable the geo-tagging feature in Android. The best thing is that you can do it from within Android settings without the need for any third-party software. This is how you disable geo-tagging in Android:

Another way to ensure that none of the images you post on social media contain any EXIF data is to share a screenshot of the image rather than the original image. That’s because screenshots don’t have any EXIF data, which will help you post images without any metadata.

Removing image EXIF data is one easy way you can protect your privacy online. Now that you know how to do it on both desktop and mobile, make sure to scrub your photos of EXIF metadata every time before posting them online. If you use an iPhone, you should also check out how you can improve security and privacy in iOS 14.