What is EXIF data?
EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format. It's a standard for storing supplemental metadata in digital photos. Each time you take a picture, your phone or camera saves a file (typically a JPEG) to your device's storage. This file contains all the data dedicated to the actual picture (pixels which you can see). Besides that, it also includes a notable amount of supplemental metadata. Such metadata can hold date, time, camera settings, copyright information.
Sounds pretty routinely, right? Let's go to the interesting part. EXIF data can also contain sensitive information, such as geolocation. All smartphones record GPS coordinates when you take a picture. So if you upload a photo with metadata to social media or send it in messenger, others can collect many details from it.
It's not a big deal in most cases. But sometimes, you better remove the EXIF metadata before sharing your photos.