

See also A Picture is Worth a Thousand Data Points For example, if you frequently post images to social media, then location, date, and time information could help snoopers track where you tend to be on a certain day or at a particular time. While much of this data is fairly harmless, some of it can present privacy risks.


It’s also a good idea to remove any potentially sensitive information from images that are stored in an unsecured location such as in an unencrypted cloud platform or on the device itself. Thankfully, it’s relatively straightforward to remove metadata from images before you make them public. If you post that image online as is, snoopers have full access to that data, causing privacy issues for the owner and subjects of the image. Depending on the device, this could include location coordinates, date, time, device model and manufacturer, and settings used to take the image. When you take a picture, most digital devices will store at least some metadata (known as EXIF data) connected to that image.
