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Saftey posting pictures!

Migrated topic.
(See post below for a proven simple method of erasing .exif data)
Tangarine_Dreams, it seems you have caught me with my pants down!

I've known about the dangers of having .exif data on photo's uploaded to the internet for some time now, but seemed to never make the connection to these forums (Or any other for that matter)to warn people about directly uploading personal photos.

The easiest way to rid of all .exif data is to put the pictures taken by yourself, or saved directly from the internet, into the default program on Windows named, "Paint" (Gimp seems to be a good equivalent program for Mac users, however I am not sure if the same fix used in, Paint, would work - I would need confirmation from a Mac user).

Choose the, "Save as" option after placing the picture into, Paint, and save it where ever you would like to on your computer, then you may upload it and share safely. Imageshack is the best way to upload photos that you want to share on the forum; it is much faster than photobucket - a website that I used for years before switching to imageshack. Or after having cleared the .exif data through paint, you can safely upload directly to the forums here.

This is a common fix that people on the same website as, Tangarine_Dreams mentioned, used to erase .exif data.

Good example of what is contained in exif data: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/10/13075421_72b1098f9b_o.gif
 
Upon investigation with the assistance of Endlessness, we have found a simple solution that will erase any exif or meta data.

1) Open the original file in, Paint or a similar program
2) Save it as a .bmp file (BMP files do NOT support exif/meta data)
3) Open the .bmp file back into paint and save it as a new file, with a new name, as a .jpg
4) Delete the remaining .bmp file and upload the new .jpg

Don't keep over-writing the same image file. There should be a .bmp awaiting deletion from your computer once you have the jpg.

Your data is now erased and it is safe to upload
 
Could you just display the picture on your screen, take a screenshot, and use that? You'd think that would get around any kind of digital watermarks embedded in the original image file...
 
w0mbat said:
Could you just display the picture on your screen, take a screenshot, and use that? You'd think that would get around any kind of digital watermarks embedded in the original image file...
Click to expand...

Doing so would reduce the quality of the image depending on your PC; there are very simple methods to go about erasing the data already, so it shouldn't give you any trouble.
 
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