Picture Perfect Crime

A recent article in PC World reminds us that uploading photos to the internet is not without major privacy concerns. Beyond the concern that you may be providing valuable information regarding your appearance, location, house and activities you may be exposing more specific details in your picture’s metadata. Metadata can contain information about date and time taken, date modified, exposure, make and model camera, details about the lens and flash. Additionally, many people do not realize that you might also be uploading your name and your home address. You can right click a photo and then choose “Properties” to see many of this information while it is still on your computer.

PC World details the solution, “You can remove all of a photo’s metadata using nothing more than Windows itself, if you have Vista. Just go back to the Details tab of the Properties dialog we discussed earlier. At the bottom of the window, you should see a link that says Remove Properties and Personal Information. Click it and all the metadata will be stripped away from the photo. You can even select several images and do this to all of them at the same time.

If you don’t have Vista, or you’re looking for an even easier metadata removal method, try a program like JPEG & PNG Stripper. This free utility does exactly what it promises: To use it, just drag your photo files to the Stripper window, and the metadata is instantly erased.

You’ll probably want to remove the metadata only from the copy of the photo you plan to upload or share. If you use either of these methods to erase metadata, it’s gone forever. Don’t do it to the copy you’re keeping on your computer unless you are sure you’ll never want to search for it by its tags or look up the exposure information ever again.”

Remember that information uploaded to the internet still exists even if you delete it later. Internet archives, servers and other methods can be used to retrieve these items even if you have already deleted it. This is why it is critically important to scrutinze anything you post or share on the internet, to ensure that you are not accidently providing more personal information than you intended.