You might be inadvertently sharing metadata with strangers online
December 8, 2025, 8:30 PMDecided to write a quick PSA about this, since I don’t hear people talk much about it nearly as much as they should. Many of us send images taken on our mobile phone cameras to others through instant messaging platforms without thinking twice about it, and normally this is perfectly safe to do. However, if you are speaking to a stranger online, or uploading a downloadable image file to a public platform, you may be unknowingly providing private information about yourself to complete strangers with potentially malicious intents via metadata.
In Layman’s terms, metadata is data about data. EXIF data, for example, is a specific, very common form of metadata that can be shared through digital image files (like JPEGs), which stores both non-sensitive information regarding the model of the camera used to take the photo and camera settings, as well as potentially sensitive information like GPS coordinates and the date and time at which the photo was taken.
This information can be scrubbed using ExifTool (tutorial here). Please keep in mind that using a VPN will not change your EXIF data.