A common belief is that the apps you share photos with remove the hidden data for you. Sometimes they do, sometimes they do not, and the answer can change with an app update or with how you send the picture. This guide explains the difference between what a service shows to the public and what it keeps, and gives you a ten-minute test you can run yourself.
Three different copies of your photo
- The original on your phone, with every tag.
- The copy the service sends to the other person. Messengers and email may pass the file on unchanged, or re-compress it.
- The copy the service shows publicly, for example on a profile or a timeline. Many services remove the location from this one.
- The copy the service stores. Even when the public copy is clean, the service itself may keep the original details.
Removing location from the public copy protects you from strangers who browse. It does not protect you from the recipient of a file you send as a document, from the company that stores it, or from anyone who gets the original another way.
Why the way you send matters
Most apps offer two ways to send a picture: as a photo, and as a file or document. Sending as a photo usually makes the app re-compress the image, and the process often drops tags as a side effect. Sending as a file keeps the original bytes, so everything travels with it. Email attachments are files, so they carry everything. Cloud links to the original carry everything too.
A ten-minute test you can run
- Take a photo with location on, so it has GPS tags. Open it in the File Metadata Viewer and confirm the location is there.
- Send it to yourself, or to a friend with a second account, the way you normally would: as a photo in the chat, as an attachment, or posted to the service.
- Download the copy you received (not a screenshot) and open it in the viewer.
- Compare. If the location and the camera are gone, that route strips them today. If they are still there, it does not.
- Repeat for each route you use. Test again after big app updates.
What to do instead
- Clean photos before you send them, with the Image Metadata Remover or, for iPhone photos, the HEIC Metadata Remover.
- Turn off location in the camera app if you rarely need it.
- Treat video like photos. Phone videos carry location too: use the Video Metadata Remover.
- Use the share sheet’s location switch on iPhone for one-off shares (Share, Options, Location).