Every photo your phone takes has two halves. One is the picture. The other is a block of hidden notes saved alongside it.

If location was switched on, those notes include where you were standing. Usually to within a few metres. For a photo taken at home, that is your address. Not your area. The spot in the room.

The same notes usually hold the make and model of your phone, the date and time to the second, and sometimes your name.

You cannot check this by looking. That is the whole problem.

Where it causes real trouble

  • Selling something online. You photograph it in your living room, and the photo carries your address to everyone who asks for the original.
  • Room and flat adverts, where you meant to give the address only to people you chose.
  • Dating profiles.
  • Photos of children, sent to family and passed on, carrying the location of a home or a school.
  • Anything sent as an email attachment. That is the case where the notes almost always survive.

Do the big apps not remove this already?

Mostly yes, and this is worth saying plainly. The large social networks usually strip these notes when you upload. So the risk on a public profile is smaller than people fear.

But it is not everywhere and it is not in your hands. Messaging apps vary. File-sharing links usually hand over the photo exactly as it is. Email attachments almost always do.

A simple rule. If a photo travels as a file, everything inside it travels too.

Look before you clean

Reading the notes is more convincing than any article about them. Open a photo you took at home and watch your own location come back. That is the moment it stops being theory. It is why our tool shows you what it found before it removes anything.

One note worth keeping

The colour profile is technically one of these notes. Remove it and your photo can come back looking washed out on some screens. It says nothing about you, so there is no reason to drop it.

The same goes for the orientation note. Remove that and your photo may come back sideways. Everything else can go without changing the picture at all.