This app purges location metadata from your photos before you share

Not everyone should know where and when your photos were taken. That's why you may want to consider installing an app that deletes your metadata before sharing. — dpa

When you share a photo on a messenger or social media, you don't always assume we're telling other people exactly where you were and what time it was when the photo was taken.

And yet most Android phones are still sending the photo's date, time and location in the so-called Exif metadata of photo files.

At the same time, this metadata is handy for sorting our photos by place. But beyond that, the metadata should be none of anyone else's business.

Some manufacturers like Xiaomi and Apple have caught on to the fact that users are growing wary of their privacy while sharing photos, and have introduced functions to remove this extraneous information when sharing.

But for most of us with Android phones, sharing photos with out our location involves downloading an app like Scrambled-Exif.

It works like this: If you're sharing a photo, you tap the share icon as usual, but then first share with the app.

The app then quickly deletes the metadata and brings you back to the sharing dialogue again so that you can tap the app to which the photo should actually go.

Scrambled Exif is open source, free of trackers and free of charge. Those who want to support the developer simply install one of the four paid app variants in the Google Play Store (from 89 cents/RM3). However, the apps do not differ in their scope of functions.

Scrambled Exif can also be found in the alternative F-Droid Store, which only offers free software.

As of iOS 13, Apple users are given the choice of whether to include location data when sharing photos on an iPhone. – dpa