So, you're new to Steem, and you decide to make an #introduceyourself post. Great! You're off to a good start. You hit the "Submit a Story" link, compose your post, and you add a number of pictures of yourself, some of which are obviously taken in your house. You're about to hit the "Post" button, but...

Before you submit that post, you might want to check something first.

Some people are not aware that images can contain metadata called EXIF data. This extra data can contain information like the date the photo was taken, the settings of the camera at the time the photo was taken, but most importantly, the EXIF data can contain the location of the photo. This is becoming increasingly common these days as more and more people are using their GPS enabled smartphones to take their pictures.

Now, you might be fine with this, but, if you're not willing to give that information away (especially if the photo was taken at your home address) you need to check the EXIF data to see if it contains your location, and, if it does, remove it.

How can I do this?

The offline way

If you haven't uploaded your photo yet, you can use a utility on your computer to remove the metadata...

OS	Instructions
Linux	You can use "exiftool" from the command line to remove the data. exiftool -all= MyImage.jpg
Mac	You can use ImageOptim. https://imageoptim.com/mac
Windows	Right-click on the image, select "Properties", click on the "Details" tab, then click "Remove Properties and Personal Information" at the bottom...

The online way

If you have already uploaded your image and want to check it, there are a number of web tools that will take the URL of an image, process it, and show you the EXIF metadata.

http://regex.info/exif.cgi

• Paste your image URL into the top box on that site and submit it.
• If you see a "Location" section in the table on the left, you know you need to strip it out.

The previously mentioned site only shows you the EXIF information. To actually remove it you need to use a different site.

http://www.verexif.com/en/

• Paste the URL into the box on the right, and click on the "Remove EXIF" button.
• Save the cleaned up image to your computer.
• Upload it to your image host.

Privacy preserved

Now you can update your #introduceyourself post with your cleaned up images and submit it. Your location privacy will be preserved, and you shouldn't get any weird Steemit stalkers turning up at your house unannounced!

Congratulations! And welcome to Steemit!