Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Extracting Exif data from pictures

This post will be a mini guide on how to 'extract' all kind of data from a picture.Why would this interest you?
Because some new gadgets (Iphone and other newage smartphones) save all kind of data in a picture. Even the location where the picture was taken (coordinates)!

So next time you post a picture on Internet, ask yourself, can the info it contains harm me in any way? Predators must be angry now. But so is the Police (Yes, they are checking this too).

Windows users can try the Exif Farm found here. Its use is pretty straightforward.
See bellow how it displays the info:


Ubuntu users can use the command line tool called jhead, which is also a great tool to manipulate exif data (delete/change).

Get it by running this in terminal:
sudo apt-get install jhead

To delete all EXIF info from a picture run this:
jhead -purejpg /path/to/image.jpg

To delete all EXIF info from all pictures (jpeg) in current directory, run this:
ls | xargs jhead -purejpg


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Alternatively, you could also try Exif, get it with:
sudo apt-get install exif
And then check the manual with:
man exif
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Another alternative to see EXIF data is this website, try it out if you hate installs.

Enjoy!

14 comments:

  1. also copying the image into paint and resaving it gets rid of any identifying info :)

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    1. True, that Paint is just one of those tools that is still useful (like Notepad!)

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  2. Nice I'll be sure to put those special pics through paint haha

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  3. This is awesome. So many times people give away vital info by innocuously posting pics on the web. Great post

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  4. That imgops website is outstanding, bookmarked with the force of a thousand suns.

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  5. Was actually looking for something like this a couple of days ago, cheers!

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  6. Usuful informartion. Thakns, mate. Following!

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  7. thank you very helpful :)
    i knew that stuff like this was happening

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  8. Reading this made my detective skills level up by one.

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  9. Very helpful, thanks for the share!

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  10. don't think I'll need to know how to do this, thanks anyway

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  11. Thanks, should be useful with pictures I post. Following for interest

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