Remove EXIF data from a photo without uploading it

EXIF is invisible in every normal viewer and travels with the file everywhere it goes, into messages, into shared folders, into a marketplace listing. Coordinates are the field people worry about, and rightly: a photo of a bicycle for sale, taken in a hallway, can pin the address it is stored at. The timestamp is the field that catches people out, because it quietly contradicts an account of when something happened.

The serial number is the underrated one. Where it is present, it links separate photographs to the same physical camera, which is how a set of images posted under different names gets tied together. None of this requires special software to read; it is a standard block that any viewer can display.

Stripping removes the recorded data, not the content. A photo of your street with no EXIF is still a photo of your street, and reflections, house numbers, school uniforms, number plates and screens in the background all survive. Treat metadata removal as one of two jobs and look at the frame as the other.

Strip before you upload rather than relying on the destination to do it. Some platforms remove metadata when you post and some do not, and there is no way to tell from the outside which one you are dealing with. To confirm the stripping itself is local, do it with the network off, then reopen the saved file in the viewer and see the fields gone.