October 3, 2026 · 7 min read
Your Photo Knows Where You Live. Here's How to Check.
GPS coordinates, the exact second, your device model — most photos carry all three. How to see what is in yours in ten seconds, and when it truly matters.
Take a photo of your cat on the sofa. Open the file's details. There is your front door, on a map, accurate to a few metres. That block of text is called EXIF metadata, your phone writes it into almost every picture, and most people post it without knowing it exists.
What is in there
| Field | What it says | Why it can matter |
|---|---|---|
| GPS coordinates | Latitude and longitude, often to a few metres | Pinpoints a home, a school, a workplace, a hotel room |
| Date and time | When the shutter opened, to the second | Places you somewhere at a specific moment |
| Device make and model | "Apple iPhone 15 Pro" | Links separate photos to one camera, and so to one person |
| Software | The app that last touched the file | Can expose editing tools or AI generators |
| Serial numbers | On some cameras, body and lens serials | Ties a set of anonymous photos together |
| Thumbnail | A small preview, stored separately | On some files it survives a crop and shows what you cropped out |
Whether any of it travels depends on how you send the photo. Big platforms generally strip most metadata from public posts — their reasons, your benefit. Email attachments, chat files sent as documents, forum uploads, marketplace listings and shared drives usually keep the lot.
See it in your own photo, right now
- iPhone: open the photo, swipe up or tap the info button. A map at the bottom means location is baked in.
- Android: open it in Google Photos, tap the information icon, read the details panel.
- Windows: right-click the file, Properties, Details tab.
- macOS: open in Preview, then Tools, Show Inspector, GPS tab.
- Any device: Skrubly's cleaner lists what it found before changing anything, and it reads the file in your browser instead of uploading it.
Do it once with a photo taken at home. Seeing your own address pulled out of a picture of a cat beats any article on the subject.
See what your photo is carrying, then strip it — all in your browser.
Open the Metadata CleanerWhen it matters, and when it doesn't
Proportion is the whole game. Treating every snapshot as a security incident is exhausting, and exhausted people stop doing the parts that count.
| Situation | How much it matters | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Photo to a friend in a private chat | Low | Nothing. They know where you live. |
| Public post on a big platform | Low for EXIF, higher for what's in frame | Check the picture; the platform usually strips the rest |
| Marketplace listing of something in your home | High | Strip metadata, check the background |
| Forum, community group, anything with strangers | High | Strip metadata |
| Sent as a file or document attachment | High | Assume it is all still in there, because it is |
| Anything showing a child's routine locations | High | Strip metadata and look hard at the frame |
The frame leaks more than the metadata
EXIF is what gets the articles. In practice you give away more through what is visible: a house number, a street sign, a school crest on a jumper, a delivery label with your address, a prescription box, a reflection in the window, keys on the table, an open inbox on a laptop screen. None of that is hidden. It just needs looking at, and looking takes five seconds.
A short checklist for the picture itself, before you post it.
What to check in the frameTwo things that strip metadata by accident
- Screenshotting a photo gives you a new file with none of the original's EXIF. It also costs you quality, so it is a hammer, not a method.
- Compressing or re-encoding rebuilds the pixels, and the metadata blocks do not survive. Skrubly's compressor does this, which is why a compressed photo comes out clean even when cleaning was not the point.
- Neither replaces stripping on purpose. A side effect is not a guarantee.
Don't upload your coordinates to delete your coordinates
Uploading a photo full of your home address to an unknown website in order to remove your home address is a bad deal. The fix is not trust, it is proof. Load Skrubly's cleaner, switch off your wi-fi, and clean a photo anyway. It works, because the file never had anywhere to go: it is read and rewritten inside the tab, never uploaded, never stored on a server.
The limits of that claim, stated straight: it covers the local tools — cleaner, compressor, background remover, AI text detector, AI image checker. The TikTok downloader is different, because the link you paste does go to our server and a third-party provider fetches the video server-side; your files still never travel. And the site itself is ad-supported and processes routine technical data like any website. The file promise is specific, which is exactly why you can test it.