WhatsApp Tricks: Avoid Sending Location Data with Your Photos
WhatsApp is a popular messaging app with several tricks up its sleeve. However, some of the most famous ones, like sending photos in their original quality or documents, have been around for a while. One such trick, which even WhatsApp had to give in to, makes it easy for us to send our photos in high quality. However, it has a small issue: when you do so, you can reveal your exact location, at least within a margin of error of fewer than ten meters.
Not a Recommended Trick
Traditionally, WhatsApp would compress the photos that our contacts sent us with a quality known technically as "potato quality." This made a simple trick very popular: instead of sending photos as photos, you could send them as documents. The "send as document" feature allows you to send any file that occupies less than 2GB. So, if you use it to send a photo, it will be sent in its original quality, without compression.
While this may seem like a good idea, there is a catch. Since the photo is sent as a document, it includes all its metadata, including EXIF tags. These tags indicate the mobile device used, its configuration, and even the location coordinates. Even if the photo doesn't show the location when viewed in Google Photos or the camera app, the location data is still there.
You can see the location data by opening the file in Google Files, going to the "Information" section, and looking for the "Coordinates" data. Google Files shows the coordinates in degrees, minutes, and seconds, which is different from the format used by Google Maps, which accepts decimal points. However, you can use any online converter to convert the format and find the location on the map.
The margin of error in the photo's location depends on the precision of the GPS. However, it can be a significant problem if someone can reveal where you live or where you have been at a specific time.
Whose Fault Is It?
The problem is not a bug or a feature. When we choose to send a photo as a document in WhatsApp, we send it without modification, which maintains its metadata. While there are reasons why we might want to do this, such as remembering where we were (on a map in Google Photos, for example), it also means that we can reveal our location without realizing it.
When we send a photo using the normal method, the app eliminates its metadata. However, this doesn't happen when we send it as a document. Therefore, we have two solutions. If we want to keep the location data in our photos, we should always send them as photos, so the metadata is eliminated. If we prefer to send the photos in their original quality, we should disable the storage of location data in our photos and use a photo manipulation app to remove the metadata before sending them.