What your photos and documents reveal about you (and how to clean them)

Phone cameras write EXIF data into every photo: the exact GPS coordinates, the date and time to the second, the phone model, lens and camera settings. A photo taken at home and sent as an original file can reveal your address to anyone who opens its properties.

Many social networks strip this data when you post, but email attachments, messaging apps set to send "original quality" or "as file", cloud sharing links, online marketplaces and dating profiles often keep it.

PDFs usually store an author name, the software that created them and creation and modification dates. Documents exported from Word or similar programs can carry the account name of whoever wrote them, comments, tracked changes and earlier revisions that are hidden but still inside the file.

Redaction is a classic trap: drawing a black box over text in a PDF hides it on screen, but the text underneath is often still there and can be copied out. Real redaction tools delete the content; drawing tools only cover it.

Screenshots carry less metadata than camera photos, but the picture itself can leak: notification banners, open tabs, email addresses, the battery and network icons that hint at your carrier, or a reflection in a window. Cropping with some apps keeps the full original inside the file, so check that the app you use really saves a new image.

On Windows, right-click a file, choose Properties and open the Details tab: photos show camera, date and GPS fields, and documents show authors and dates. On a Mac, open the file in Preview and choose Tools → Show Inspector; for photos, the "i" tab includes a GPS section with a map. On an iPhone, open a photo in the Photos app and swipe up to see where and when it was taken.

For PDFs, open File → Properties in Acrobat or another reader. The fields for author, creator application and producer often reveal more than people expect — including company names and software versions.

Selling something online: a photo of the item taken in your living room can carry your home coordinates. Sending a CV: the PDF properties may show the name of the template's original author or a previous employer's account. Sharing a screenshot of a chat: other conversations in the sidebar, profile pictures and the time can identify people who never agreed to be shared.

None of this means you should stop sharing files. It means taking ten seconds to check, especially when a file goes to strangers or to a public place.

For photos, a metadata cleaner such as Localvert's Remove EXIF tool shows what is inside and deletes it without re-compressing the image. Converting a photo to another format (for example HEIC to JPG) also drops most metadata.

For documents, use the "Inspect document" or "Remove personal information" option in your office program before exporting to PDF. When in doubt, the safest option for a PDF is to convert its pages to images and back, which leaves only what is visible.