Removing GPS Metadata from Blog Images | Generated by AI

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Here’s a summary of what happened, with locations generalized:

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EXIF GPS Cleanup — jekyll-ai-blog assets

Problem: 48 out of 614 images in the blog assets tree contained embedded GPS coordinates in their EXIF metadata — revealing exact home address, frequent cooking locations, a north Guangdong road trip route, a Tibet/Lhasa visit, and a Shanghai trip.

Root cause: Smartphones tag every photo with GPS by default. When you run magick -strip -quality 70 to compress, -strip removes EXIF — but only if you remember to include it. Many of these images were converted without -strip, or were original phone photos placed directly into the repo.

What was done:

1. Built ww image exif — a CLI scanner that reads EXIF GPS tags from images and reports coordinates + Google Maps links. Supports recursive scanning (-r) and listing all files (--all).

2. Added --clean mode that strips GPS EXIF in-place without re-encoding pixel data (uses piexif for JPEG byte-level surgery; Pillow fallback for other formats). All other EXIF (camera, orientation, date) is preserved.

3. Ran the full recursive scan + clean across assets/:

   Metric	Value
   Images scanned	614
   With GPS	48
   Cleaned	48
   Remaining GPS	0

   Locations found (generalized):

   • ~22 images at home / apartment interior
   • ~16 images at a frequent cooking/kitchen location
   • 7 images along a north Guangdong highway route
   • 1 image in Lhasa, Tibet
   • 1 image in Shanghai
   • 3 images near an EV charging station

Why this matters when sharing images online:

• Home address leak: Every photo taken at home embeds your exact coordinates. Post a photo of your desk setup or a purchase unboxing, and anyone can find your apartment door.
• Routine exposure: Cooking photos, equipment photos, repair photos — all timestamped and geotagged, building a pattern of where you are and when.
• Travel tracking: Road trip photos create a precise itinerary with timestamps and coordinates. Vacation photos tell people exactly when your home is empty.
• Platforms don’t always strip EXIF: Some do (Twitter/X strips it, WhatsApp strips it on send), but many don’t — especially self-hosted blogs, forums, GitHub repos, and direct file uploads. Never rely on the platform to protect you.
• Metadata is invisible to the naked eye: You see a photo of food. The file carries your kitchen’s latitude/longitude, device model, and the exact second you pressed the shutter.

What to do:

1. Check before sharing: ww image exif /path/to/images -r scans everything.
2. Strip GPS: ww image exif /path/to/images -r --clean removes it.
3. Batch workflow: Run magick input.heic -strip -quality 70 output.jpg when converting phone photos — -strip drops all metadata at conversion time.
4. Verify: Always run the exif scan again after processing to confirm zero GPS hits.

The 48 images in this repo are now clean.

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