In this digital age of sharing and connectivity, thousands of images are uploaded to the internet every day. But what most people don't realize is that these images are sometimes attached with potentially sensitive information in the form of metadata.
It is this information that hackers harvest and use for their malicious intents. From a single image, they can find your address or other personal data. Needless to say, you don't want that. To avoid falling prey to such individuals, you are encouraged to always remove metadata from photos before uploading them online.
Luckily, with a little help from third-party software like WinZip, you can do all this in a matter of minutes. Let's see how.
In layman's terms, metadata is data that provides information about other data. For example, in photos, metadata can be information and specific details concerning a particular image file. This includes the file name, date created, geographical location, author, camera type, and more image settings. It is mainly used to organize, maintain, and sort image files within a platform.
To access photo metadata, you don't really need to use any special software. However, the process of accessing metadata information can be different for Windows and Mac operating systems. Here is how you can view all the metadata within a picture file for both operating systems:
People edit metadata photo information for many reasons. Most people do it to correct the name of the image's photo or the date the image was captured. But as the threat of cyber-attacks increases, it is vital that you learn how to remove metadata from photos to reduce the risk of leaking sensitive personal data. Let's take a look.
Before we delve into it, it's important to note that manually editing metadata is not ideal. However, if you are really concerned for your safety, here is how to edit or remove metadata of a digital photo:
For Mac users, third-party software is required. In this case, you can turn to software like WinZip. Using its Remove Personal Data feature, you can easily remove any EXIF metadata from your file. The best part is that WinZip works with a variety of file types, including JPG, PNG, PDF, DOC, GIF, PSD, PPT, XLS, and DOC.
To view metadata on a macOS, follow the steps below:
It's important to note that metadata is there to serve a purpose. It aids the easy discovery of information as well as finding and retrieving resources. People who process large amounts of photos need metadata for organizing photos using specific data categories.
However, metadata can also be used to steal one's information. So, when uploading sensitive images on the internet, ensure you have checked the file's metadata for any data that might be sensitive.
