What photos give away
A photograph is not just pixels. Cameras write a parallel record into the file describing where you were, what you were holding and when — and it travels with the image everywhere it goes.
Your photos know where you live
The coordinates are in the file, not in the picture
Location data is not something you can see by looking at an image. It sits in a separate block called EXIF, alongside the camera model and shutter speed. Anyone who receives the file can read it in seconds, and on most phones it is on by default.
How precise it actually is
A modern phone records latitude and longitude to six decimal places, which resolves to roughly a metre. It often stores altitude too, which in a tall building narrows things to a floor. That is enough to identify a specific flat, not a neighbourhood.
The riskiest pictures are the boring ones
Not holiday photos. The dangerous ones are ordinary shots taken at home: a pet on the sofa, a parcel that arrived, an item being sold second-hand, a whiteboard in a home office. People post those without thinking, and every one carries the same coordinates.
Turning it off is not retroactive
Disabling location for the camera stops new photos being tagged. Every photo already in your library keeps what it was given. If you are about to send an old one, check it rather than assume.
What EXIF data actually contains
A short definition
EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format, a standard for storing structured information inside an image, written by the camera at the moment of capture. It was designed so photographers could sort their own libraries. It was not designed with sharing in mind.
What is usually in there
Camera make and model, lens, exposure settings, orientation, the date and time to the second, and the software that processed it. On phones, almost always GPS. Professional bodies add a serial number. Some cameras record an owner name, typed in once during setup and forgotten.
Why the serial number matters more than it sounds
A body serial number is a persistent identifier. Every photo that camera ever took carries the same one, which means a set of otherwise unconnected images can be tied together and traced back to a purchase record. Anonymous photographs are rarely as anonymous as intended.
EXIF is not the only layer
Editors add their own. Adobe writes XMP, a second metadata block in XML. Photoshop writes an IPTC record. Each can hold a name, a copyright line, a city, and a document tracking ID that survives across saves.
Cropping is not deleting
The thumbnail nobody thinks about
Cameras write a small preview into the file so gallery apps can show it instantly. It lives in a second directory of the EXIF block. Some editors update it when you crop. Plenty do not, and simply leave the old one in place.
This has gone wrong publicly, more than once
The pattern is always the same: someone crops an image to hide a detail, publishes it, and the embedded preview still holds the uncropped frame. It is recoverable by anyone who opens the file with a tool that reads EXIF, which is to say anyone who cares to look.
Covering something over is a separate trap
Pixelation is the risky one: where the hidden content is text in a known font, researchers have reconstructed it by searching for the rendering that pixelates to the same blocks. A heavy blur on a photograph is far harder to undo and often practically safe. Solid black is safer still, but only if the image is then flattened and re-exported — in a layered file or a PDF, the covered content usually still sits underneath.
How to be sure
Drop the file in above. If a preview is stored inside, this page renders it on screen so you can see exactly what a recipient could recover.
What a screenshot gives away
The metadata is thinner, but not empty
A screenshot is generated by your operating system, not a camera, so there is no lens or GPS data. What you do get is a capture timestamp, the display resolution and colour profile, and on some systems the software that made it.
Editing adds more than it removes
Open a screenshot in an image editor to annotate or crop, and that editor writes its own block on save: its name, its version, sometimes a document ID, sometimes the registered user. A screenshot that started clean can pick up your name on the way out.
The real leak is inside the frame
Notification banners, browser tabs, an account name in a corner, an autocomplete dropdown, a file path in a title bar, a second monitor reflected in a window. No tool can strip these, because they are part of the picture. Look at the whole frame before you send, not just the part you meant to capture.
What your iPhone writes into every shot
HEIC, not JPEG
iPhones save in HEIC unless told otherwise. It is a modern container that stores metadata as numbered items rather than a simple block, which is why many older tools quietly fail to read or strip it. This page parses HEIC properly.
What is in there
GPS latitude, longitude and altitude; the exact capture time including time zone; the make and model; which of the several rear lenses was used; the iOS version; and a unique image identifier. Portrait and Live Photos add depth data and a short video segment.
Sharing from the Photos app
iOS lets you remove location at the point of sharing, under Options at the top of the share sheet. It works, but it is per-share, it defaults back, and it only covers location — not device details or timestamps. It does nothing if you send the file another way.
Converting to JPEG is not cleaning
Most converters copy the EXIF block across to preserve capture information. You end up with the same metadata in a different container. Check the output rather than assuming the conversion dropped anything.