Your Photos Are Probably Giving Away Your Location. Here’s How to Stop That

Take a photo on any digital camera or smartphone and it's not just the pixels that are saved. The image also gets a bunch of metadata appended to it, also known as EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data, including details of when it was taken, the device that was used to capture it, and the camera settings that were used.

If your phone or camera has a GPS chip and is tracking your location, then this gets invisibly stamped on to the photo as well. That's good if you want to look back at all the pictures you've ever taken in New York City or at Lizard Point, but not so good if you're sharing pictures of your pets and don't want to give away your home address at the same time.

Any time a photo goes beyond the audience ...