So, what do your pictures tell about you? Here is a list of 10 software solutions for viewing Exif data. It is trivially easy to remove Exif information without even knowing you did so, in fact, making any kind of change to a picture other than renaming it will scrub all Exif data it contained. Initially, Exif was introduced as a way to help automatically tag and catalog pictures taken with high-end cameras, and wasn’t a problem until every cellphone started having a camera equivalent to yesteryear’s high-powered camera.

So, what is Exif and why is it in pictures in the first place?Įxif is a set of information such as name of the owner of the camera, shutter speed, GPS coordinates and so on, embedded into a picture as it is taken by a digital camera. While Exif originally wasn’t intended to be used as a tracking feature, Snowden’s revelations show that NSA is in fact collecting it in droves from everyone. In 2012, John McAfee was located and arrested in Guatemala based on Exif data from a reporter’s photograph.

Online exif tool