Remove location data

Privacy is important, but the modern world proves some really useful tools in attaching tracing data into things like images so that when you find a photo in a directory many years from now, you can place it to a point on the earth with a time stamp.

So, how do you tally these two contradictory needs? Well, I keep my original photos and publish versions that have the location removed.

Linux is your friend here, with a tool "exiftool".

Find files with meta data

exiftool -gps* */* > myList

Produces a "myList" of files with the meta data. I tend to lose the other files I am not interested in, but that's to preserve them as much as possible!

Next, cut out the data we don't want to publish:

cd to_directory_with_images_with_meta_data_to_remove

exiftool "-gps*=" *

cd ..

Work through all the directories. exiftool retains the original, so go and remove these once all the files have been processed.

rm `find . -name *_original`

Now copy over the new files to where you are publishing them.