As you may or may not be aware, every time somebody takes a picture with their cell phone, camera, etc. it will (by default unless disabled) capture EXIF data. The EXIF captures things such as exposure settings, camera model, date / time picture was taken, and GPS (if the device has GPS).
This meta data (EXIF) can cause problems if you post those pictures on-line. Here is an example.
You’re supposed to work, but your friends are going out of town for event X. You call in sick, and go with your friends. As usual you take some photo’s of yourselves having fun at event X.
Now either you (or your friends) post the photo(s) to your favorite photo sharing website (think instagram, snapchat, facebook). There are employees whose job it is to check up on their staff by following what is posted about the company on social networking sites. You may have a disgruntled employee or co-worker who may have an issue with you.
= Time to be nasty =
Now the disgruntled employee / HR representative takes a look at your facebook account (or one of your friends) and looks at event X photos. They download one photo, and open it up and look at the EXIF (meta data). Assuming the photo was taken with a GPS enabled device (think iphone, android cell phone, etc) they now know the exact date / time the photo was taken, coupled with the GPS longitude and latitude of where the photo was taken.
Thank you, that information is enough to get you busted. At the very least, you could lose that days pay… or worse yet, you get written up, suspended, etc.
You can resolve this for your OWN photos, but it won’t help if your friends still post it with EXIF data. The process is fairly trivial to wipe the EXIF information. Your operating system of choice may do it easily. Otherwise, you’ll be looking at a 3rd party tool to wipe the information.
Here are two links for you. The first one will explain EXIF in more details, and provide a way in Windows to wipe the EXIF data. The second link is more geared towards Linux, and will show you some steps to “recursively” wipe the EXIF data from your photo’s.
* http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-ways-to-remove-exif-metadata-from-photos-and-why-you-might-want-to/
* https://winaero.com/blog/remove-personal-information-photos-linux/
Keep in mind, this was only one example. Posting your photos with EXIF data can provide people with your GPS co-ordinates. The GPS information can provide people with your exact address(es), and be used as a means to track you.
I would highly recommend wiping your EXIF data PRIOR to posting it to any online site.
= Cons =
Some sites (such as google photos, icloud, etc) may look at the EXIF data to group photos by date. By wiping the EXIF data, that will disable that ability and google photo, icloud etc will no longer be able to auto-sort your photos by data (potentially disabling the auto album by date).
Additionally, if your photos are ever restored from your computer / device they may take on the data of when they were restored. This will you may lose the ability to know when the photo was taken. If you ever have to sort your photos by date (such as by year), this will pose a problem.
= best practice =
You may wish to setup a best practice. Keep the EXIF data on all of your photos EXCEPT for the photo’s that you post online. One would simply make a copy of your existing photos, then wipe the EXIF data and proceed to post the photo’s online. Afterwords, you could delete the “copied photos”.