Every photo carries hidden data. See exactly what yours is telling people, including the spot on the map where it was taken, then strip all of it in one click.

What EXIF Actually Is

EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format. It is a block of text your camera or phone writes inside the image file, next to the pixels. Nobody sees it when they look at the photo, but any program can read it, and plenty do.

A phone photo typically carries thirty to sixty of these tags. Some are harmless, like the exposure time. Others are not.

What It Gives Away

Tag	What it holds	Why it matters
GPSInfo	Latitude and longitude, often to a few metres	Points at your home, school or workplace.
DateTimeOriginal	The exact second the shutter fired	Builds a timeline of where you were and when.
Make and Model	Which phone or camera took it	Links separate photos to one device.
BodySerialNumber	The camera serial number	A unique fingerprint tying every photo to one body.
Artist and Copyright	A name you typed once and forgot	Publishes your real name on an anonymous post.
Software	What edited the file last	Shows the image was edited, and with what.
Thumbnail	A small preview baked in at capture	Can still show the uncropped, unedited original.

The thumbnail trap: cropping a photo does not always update the embedded thumbnail. People have published cropped images where the hidden preview still showed the part they cut out. Stripping metadata removes that preview along with everything else.

Who Strips It and Who Does Not

Where you post it	EXIF survives?	Notes
Major social networks	Usually stripped	They re-encode uploads, which drops most tags. Do not rely on it.
Messaging apps, as a photo	Usually stripped	Compression rewrites the file.
Messaging apps, as a file or document	Survives	Sending "as a document" keeps the original bytes intact.
Email attachment	Survives	The file arrives byte for byte.
Your own website or blog	Survives	Unless your CMS strips it, which most do not by default.
Cloud storage share link	Survives	You are sharing the original file.
Marketplace and classified listings	Varies	The highest risk category, because you are a stranger to the buyer.

Doing It in GIMP

GIMP gives you control over this at export time, which most people never notice.

Open the photo and go to File > Export As.
Choose a filename and press Export.
In the options dialog, expand Advanced Options.
Untick Save EXIF data, Save XMP data, Save IPTC data, Save thumbnail and Save colour profile.
Export. GIMP remembers these settings for the next export in the same session.

You can also read the metadata inside GIMP first, under Image > Metadata > View Metadata. The saving and exporting guide covers the rest of that dialog.

Common Questions

Does stripping metadata change how the photo looks?

Only slightly, and only in two ways. Removing the colour profile can shift colours a little on wide gamut screens, and re-saving a JPG re-compresses it once. Choose PNG or WebP if that second point bothers you.

Does it remove the orientation flag too?

Yes, which is exactly why the pixels are rotated to match before the tags go. Your photo stays the right way up.

Can EXIF be recovered after stripping?

Not from the cleaned file. The tags are gone from those bytes. Your original copy still has them, so keep or delete that as you see fit.

Do screenshots have EXIF?

Very little, since there is no camera involved. They can still carry the device model and the software that made them.

EXIF Viewer and Metadata Remover