Image Privacy is an unique app that will remove EXIF metadata from your photos in order to make them more fit for sharing publicly. This app is great for those who share images on a daily basis. For these types of users, it will make it incredibly easy to relax knowing that whoever gets his or her hands on your image, won’t also be getting his or her hands on your personal data as well. While this app isn’t necessary, there are quite a few people out there who become concerned by this type of issue.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

When you snap a photo with your phone’s or tablet’s camera, the photo stores some information like date, type of device used, and maybe even location information. This is called EXIF metadata and is with the photo for anyone to look at. Image Privacy is an app that allows you to remove this data from images.

This app is primarily designed to make you feel more secure when sending photos. By stripping the image of unnecessary personal data, most people who look at the image won’t be able to tell where or who it came from. It is also designed to protect you from advancing technology specifically geared towards searching for unavailable information.

Pros

• Strips EXIF metadata from photos (e.g. photos you take with your camera or photos that you got from someone)
• Works easily via the share menu
• Process multiple images at once

Cons

• Does not work properly with Google Plus
• Creates a new copy of photos when you strip data and cannot automatically delete new images after you share them
• Unknown bugs may occur in future? (Read discussion below for more info on this.)

Discussion

In an online world that is becoming more and more public, privacy can be a very difficult thing to achieve and maintain. A simple and easy way to start the battle against publicity is to make sure the images you post on the internet are free and clear of personal information. According to the developer of Image Privacy, there is fact new search engines that are designed to search for specific meta-tags in photos. This can be a scary thing when it comes to anonymity and privacy. While some may think this app is only for the paranoid, the truth is, we live in an ever-changing world and honestly, the less amount of information we unknowingly share with strangers, the better.

As far as the app goes, in practice, it is extremely simple. Once the app is installed, there will be a new option in your Share/Send To menu. The app will not add a new icon to your app drawer or your homescreen in an attempt to remain simple and unobtrusive. The new menu option will simply be an action that will strip your image of all of the attached EXIF metadata. This data includes the location where the image was taken, the camera that was used, and even the date on which the image was created. You can even process multiple images at once which can be great for when you want to send a batch of images to a friend or when you’re uploading multiple images to a social network.

While the app is incredibly simple and equally functional, there are a few aspects that can be rather frustrating. The big one being that the app will actually copy the image when removing the metadata. As a result, you will have doubles of every image that you strip. The major problem being that the app cannot automatically delete the image. The developer claims that this is not possible, however, I am extremely skeptical of that claim because the task seems rather simple and is accomplished in other Android apps for other types of files. Additionally, the developer makes a bizarre warning that the app may malfunction when used in conjunction with other Android apps. The warning is very vague and confusing and only serves to turn users away from the app.

Conclusion and download link

When all is said and done, this app performs fantastically. It is an incredibly simple way to boost your privacy and keep strangers from uncovering personal information. However, the fact that you must manually delete the stripped images after sharing can be rather tedious. However, if privacy is an important aspect of your life, then perhaps this won’t be as much of an inconvenience.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 0.5

Requires: Android 2.1 and up

Download size: 1mb

Image Privacy on Play Store