Remove Location from Kids’ Photos Before Sharing

Last updated · 4 min read

Quick answer

A photo that you take at home or at school can carry the exact GPS location. Child-safety groups advise parents to remove location data before they share photos of children. Clean the photos with WipePic first. It is free, and your photos are not uploaded.

What a photo of your child can reveal

Phones save the GPS position in a photo by default. A picture of your child on the front porch can carry the position of your home. A picture at a football match or on the first day of school can carry the position of the club or the school. The photo also holds the date and time.

One photo may not say much. Many photos over time can show a routine: the school, the clubs and the days of the week. The FBI describes this as a “pattern of life”. In a 2011 story, an FBI analyst said that it does not have to be in real time to be dangerous, because historical data can show where a person is most likely to be at a certain time.

What child-safety groups say

The NSPCC, a UK child-protection charity, advises people who share pictures of children to make sure that “location data and other image metadata have been removed before uploading images”. It also lists visible details to check, such as school logos or signs, road names and club names.

CEOP Education, part of the UK National Crime Agency, tells parents that many phones and apps tag photos with metadata by default, which can include location details. It explains how to turn this off on iPhone, iPad and Android.

The US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) published a guide for back-to-school photos in August 2026. It asks parents to check the sign in the picture, the background (house numbers, street signs, license plates and landmarks) and the location settings. It also asks who can see the post.

How to remove the location with WipePic

  1. Open WipePic.
  2. Add the photos, or the whole folder. You can add up to 300 files, up to 50 MB each.
  3. Click a photo to see its fields. If it has GPS data, WipePic shows a dot on a small offline world map.
  4. Select Remove Metadata. WipePic works in your browser. The photos, the file names and the metadata are not uploaded.
  5. Download the cleaned photos. Several files come as one ZIP.
  6. Share the cleaned copies. Keep the originals in a private place, such as a family album.

WipePic does not re-encode the photos. It reads each cleaned file again and saves it only if no removable metadata is left. For more about the location data in photos, see remove location from a photo.

What you must also check in the picture

Removing metadata does not change what you can see. Check these before you post:

  • School clues. A school uniform, a badge, a sign, a bag with the school name or a sign with a class number.
  • Home clues. House numbers, street signs, car plates and a recognizable view from the window.
  • Reflections. A window, a car or a mirror can show a sign or a number behind you.
  • Names. A full name in the picture, on a sign or in the caption.
  • Other children. Ask their parents before you post a photo that shows them.
  • The audience. A private family album is safer than a public post.

WipePic cannot blur faces or remove visible content. Crop or edit the photo in another app before you clean it. Then turn off location tagging on your phone, so that new photos start clean.

Sources

NSPCC Learning, Photographing and filming children. CEOP Education, Sharing pictures and videos of your child online. FBI, Cyber Alerts for Parents & Kids: Be Prudent When Posting Images Online (December 2011). NCMEC, Smile, Snap, Share: A Guide to Safer Back to School Photos (August 4, 2026). All read on November 8, 2026.

Questions

Does removing the location make a photo of my child safe to post?

No. It removes one risk, the hidden location in the file. A school uniform, a school sign, a house number or a caption can still show where your child is. Look at what the picture shows, and think about who can see the post.

Do social media sites remove the location from photos?

Some do and some do not, and they can change. The FBI wrote in a 2011 story that some popular social media sites scrub metadata before they publish a photo, while others use it to show location next to the image. Photos that you send by email, in a cloud link or as a file keep their metadata. Do not rely on the site.

Should I turn off location tagging on my phone as well?

Yes. CEOP Education and the FBI both advise it. Then new photos do not start with a location. WipePic helps with the photos that you already have, and with the ones from other people, such as a grandparent who sends you a picture.

Does WipePic change the quality of the photos?

No. It does not re-encode the photos, so the pixels do not change. It keeps the orientation, the color profile and transparency.

Can I clean a whole school-year folder of photos?

Yes. Add the folder, even with subfolders. You can add up to 300 files at a time, up to 50 MB each. If you clean several files, you download them as one ZIP.

Remove the metadata from your photos

Free. In your browser. Your photos do not go to a server.

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