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I am curious about whether Facebook will remove geotags from uploaded photos automatically? Or is it the responsibility of the user to ensure this information isn't in the photos that they upload?

Many of my friends have public profiles and I am always warning them about this, and I would imagine that the biggest risk comes from publicized location information being freely available in any photos they upload.

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  • I know this doesn't answer your question, but I've also been curious about this and the general consensus has been that if you really want to avoid having geotag information on your photos the best way to go is to disable geotagging in the first place (usually from phone cameras). Not ideal, especially since geotags can be nice for other uses, but good to know... – batpigandme Jul 17 '13 at 13:43
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According to these sites: http://www.sileo.com/geotagging/ and http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1053234, Facebook does strip geotag info from photos.

Bear in mind that is as of late 2011, though. Also, this is Facebook we're talking about, so this could change with no notice, and it is likely to since geotags would mean more data for them. I am actually surprised they would ever strip anything.

Edit based on the 2nd site: Since the motivation for stripping the info seems to be just to save space (not any kind of privacy or legal policy), it seems even more likely that this will change.

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  • Regarding Facebook potentially changing their policy in the future - I guess my question was more around whether anyone can find someone with a public profile, right click on one of their images, "Save as" and then view the location data. I can understand that Facebook may in the future choose to store this information in their database (as personal data is the business they're in) but to make this publically available to anyone seems like a huge security risk and that's what I'm more concerned with. – LeopardSkinPillBoxHat Jul 18 '13 at 0:46
  • Yes, that would definitely be a worry. Facebook stripping out the info makes you safe from others getting it as well, though, so you're good. (In fact, even if Facebook did start to store the info, it might keep it just for itself and still strip it from the visible pictures for just the reason you mentioned.) – A.M. Jul 18 '13 at 2:07
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If you right click a public Facebook profile image taken with a phone camera, save as, there is no GPS or other location info, just size and other basic info.

Facebook will be holding the info they strip when uploaded, but do not release (unless you make them an offer I suppose).

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