Photo Scrub

A photo from a phone carries more than the picture. Inside the file sit the GPS position where it was taken, the day and time, the phone model, and sometimes the editing app. Most sites strip these when you post, but not all do, and a photo sent in a message or sold as a file keeps them. Photo Scrub reads them out and makes a clean copy. It is at theyrave.com/tools/scrub, free, with no account needed, and from the Safety tab under Strip location from photos before you post them.

Use it

1. Open theyrave.com/tools/scrub.
2. Tap the dashed box and pick photos, or drag them in. JPEG, PNG and WebP work.
3. Each photo gets a row saying what was found, in plain words: Location, Camera, Taken, Software, and for a PNG any Hidden text. A found location is marked.
4. Press Download clean copy on a row, or Download all clean copies at the bottom.

A clean copy has "clean" in its name and the original is untouched. Nothing leaves your phone or computer: the reading and the copying happen in your browser, and no photo is sent to TheyRave or anywhere else.

How the copy is made

Your browser draws the picture again and saves it, which drops every tag in the file. A JPEG saved again may lose a little sharpness. The JPEG quality slider starts at 92, which keeps nearly all of it. A PNG or WebP copy keeps every pixel.

HEIC

An iPhone saves photos as HEIC unless told otherwise, and browsers cannot open that format. The page says so and asks you to save the photo as a JPEG first: open it in Photos, press Share, then Save as JPEG, or set the camera to Most Compatible under Settings, Camera, Formats.

What it does not do

It reads and removes the tags in the file. It cannot see what is in the picture: a street sign, a window with a view, a reflection, a parcel with your name on it. Look at the picture itself before you post it. For what to do once your address is out, see the Doxxing Response Playbook and Address Removal on the Safety tab.

Your avatar

The avatar you upload to your page is already safe: the cropper draws it again before it is saved, so no tag from the original ever reaches the site.

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