Is my photo uploaded anywhere?

No. The check runs in a web worker in your browser, and the library it uses cannot make a network request at all. An automated test records every request the page makes while scanning a real photo and fails if any of them contains the file’s bytes.

Does removing metadata reduce the image quality?

No. Metadata lives in separate marker segments, so it is removed without touching the compressed image data. A cleaned JPEG is byte-identical in its picture content to the original. Covering a face or adding a watermark does re-encode the image, so those are opt-in and the page says so.

Does the camera orientation survive?

Yes. Orientation is the one EXIF tag that changes how the picture looks, so it is preserved while the rest is removed. Your photo will not come back rotated.

If it finds nothing, is my photo safe to post?

We report "no issues found", not "safe". Absence of detections is not proof of absence — no tool catches everything, and we would rather say that than imply a guarantee. Look at the picture itself too.

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Photo privacy checker

A photograph is two things at once: the picture you meant to share, and a block of data your phone wrote into the file without mentioning it. The second part is where you were standing, what time it was, which camera took it, and sometimes that camera’s serial number.

This page explains what is in there, what it can be used for, and how to look before you post. You can check a photo now — nothing is uploaded, and no account is needed.

Works today, in your browser. Photos open in the editor and Word documents are checked for hidden data; either way the file is read on your device and never uploaded.

Check & clean a file free How we can promise that

What a photo carries besides the picture

Most of it lives in EXIF, a block of metadata written at the moment of capture. Some of it is in the picture itself, in things nobody notices while framing the shot.

GPS coordinates — usually accurate to within a few meters, written by default on most phones
Date and time to the second, which places you somewhere at a particular moment
Camera make, model and sometimes the body’s serial number, which links separate photos to one device
The editing software and its version
Thumbnails, which can survive a crop and still show the original frame
Faces of people who did not agree to be posted
Whatever is legible in the background: a house number, a parcel label, a lanyard, a screen

Why GPS in a photo matters more than it sounds

A single coordinate is a pin on a map. A set of them is a pattern: the place that appears in the evening is where you live, the one on weekday mornings is where you work, and the one that appears at 8:45 every weekday is a school.

Social networks usually strip EXIF when they re-encode an upload — but "usually" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It does not hold for files sent over chat apps as documents, attached to email, uploaded to forums and marketplaces, shared to cloud drives, or handed to an AI chatbot. Those keep the original bytes.

What this checker looks at

Everything below runs on your device. The file is read in a web worker that has no network access of its own.

EXIF, IPTC and XMP metadata, including GPS, device, timestamps and author fields
Faces, if you switch that on — the model runs locally and marks everyone so you can cover them
QR codes and barcodes, including boarding passes, which carry your booking reference
Embedded thumbnails and previews

How to do it

1Open the checkerNo account, no sign-up. The page works as soon as it loads.
2Drop the photo inIt is read in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server — you can watch the network tab while it happens.
3Read what was foundEach finding comes with a plain sentence about what it could be used for, and values are shown masked rather than in full.
4Download a cleaned copyMetadata is stripped without re-compressing the image, so the picture keeps its quality. JPEG scan data is preserved byte for byte.

Questions

No. The check runs in a web worker in your browser, and the library it uses cannot make a network request at all. An automated test records every request the page makes while scanning a real photo and fails if any of them contains the file’s bytes.

We report no issues found, never “safe”. Absence of detections is not proof of absence, and detection is best-effort.