exiftool

Metadata contained within the image file.

Using the one from this post this is what I can see (exif data has been stripped or wasn’t there):

Here’s another example where the data is plain as day:

Exif data can contain everything from the make/model of device used to take a picture, to a gps location of where the picture was taken.

Removing that information depends on what you’re using to do it, but can be done with an exif editing tool in pretty much any OS I’m aware of.

Edit: Autocorrect is a pita.

It is metadata that can include what type of camera took the photo and precise location from GPS. I open photos in GIMP and then export them, taking care to uncheck the exif and a couple other metadata options.

Scrambled Exif on F-Droid to wipe it.

Photo, share, choose Scrambled Exif, wait two seconds, share screen comes back, share with friend, and it sends the picture but not the privacy violations.

For techies: would opening my photo in MS Paint and doing “save as png” remove exif data?

If you’re on Windows, right click an image, and go into the properties. There should be a Details tab where you’ll find a bunch of text fields that can be edited.

There’s also data that doesn’t even show in there. For example, your camera/phone could be set up to save its GPS coordinates in EXIF so that you can keep track of where the pictures were taken. Naturally, unless it’s stripped from the file, that data can be seen by anyone who has access to the file.

Most image editing software should be able to delete any EXIF data, but there is also software that can mass-edit all of that stuff to simplify the process.

One way is to take a screenshot of the photo. Or load and save in a different format. Or use image sharing sites that remove metadata (imgur used to be the standard one, not sure what’s good now)