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When you take a picture with a digital camera or phone, a file with information about the picture is embedded in the image itself.
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So make sure you share this guide with your contacts, it explains a small trick that could save you lots of time! What is EXIF dataĮXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format, and is a type of metadata specific to digital images. It’s incredibly simple to share images and videos on WhatsApp while preserving the metadata. Many images we receive are from trusted sources using common tools like WhatsApp. In the absence of reliable metadata, investigators resort to time-consuming content analysis and geo-location using features in the image.
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Did you know that most social media tools strip out metadata from images we share, as well as compressing them? While there are good privacy and optimization reasons to do this, it makes it very hard for open source investigators to determine who is pictured in a photo, what they are doing (and why), as well as where and when it was taken.
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