Check your photo before sharing it
Without your knowledge, a photo can tell where, when and on which device it was taken.
- The service shows what a photo can reveal about you: your location, the weather, even where you stood and how you held the phone at the moment of the shot.
- Remove the metadata, hide faces and text and change the picture fingerprint copies are found by, in one click.
- Hide faces, text and licence plates automatically.
- See the file’s history and find the marks AI generators and editors leave, where they leave them.
The photo stays in your browser and is never sent to third-party services. Free to use, with no limits.
What a photo says about you
Metadata (EXIF, XMP, IPTC) are the records a camera and editing apps write inside the file: the phone model, the date and time to the second, coordinates, the lens, the software. Found You reads them and adds what is visible in the picture itself: faces and people, text, licence plates, QR codes, documents. Every fact comes with its own explanation and no verdict.
- Location
- Coordinates from EXIF, the address, what kind of place it is, nearby places and surveillance cameras. The context is looked up from coordinates rounded to 4 decimals (about 11 m), and the result says exactly what was sent.
- Time
- Date and time to the second, the weekday, the time of day, the camera’s time zone and the place’s — and whether they agree.
- Device
- Maker and model, system version, lens, shutter count, Live Photo and Motion Photo markers, serial numbers when they are recorded.
- People and faces
- How many people are in the frame and whether a face is large enough to recognise: the biometric standard ISO/IEC 39794-5 asks for 90 px between the pupils.
- Text, plates, codes, documents
- Everything that can be read off the picture itself: text recognition in Russian and English, licence plates, QR codes and barcodes, bank cards and documents.
- File origin
- A camera original, a messenger copy, a screenshot or a re-save; the marks of generative editors (iOS Clean Up, Magic Editor, Galaxy AI) and Content Credentials (C2PA).
- Leak index
- A number from 0 to 100 — the sum of the weights of the facts found. It is arithmetic, not a verdict: under the number is the list of what scored.
How it works
- Choose a photo. It opens in your browser and goes nowhere: the recognition models are downloaded to your device and run there.
- Read the facts. What the file records, what the picture shows and what follows from it — each fact with its own explanation.
- Download the cleaned copy. The exported file is parsed again and the interface reports: N metadata fields before, 0 left.
What is removed and what stays
Two presets: “Metadata only” leaves the picture untouched, “Apply all” rebuilds it.
| What | Metadata only | Apply all |
|---|---|---|
| Metadata: EXIF, XMP, IPTC, ICC | removed | removed |
| The embedded thumbnail and vendor data after the end of the image (Motion Photo, Samsung trailer) | removed | removed |
| The picture’s pixels | unchanged for JPEG and PNG; other formats are re-encoded once at the highest quality | re-encoded |
| Faces, text, licence plates, codes, documents | kept | blurred |
| Camera sensor fingerprint (PRNU) | kept | weakened, except in PNG and screenshots |
| The picture fingerprint used by reverse image search | unchanged | changed to a set target; after export the page shows by how much |
| File name | neutral photo-xxxxxx | neutral photo-xxxxxx |
How to turn geotags off on your device
A geotag is written by the camera at the moment of the shot, and switching it off is easier than scrubbing every file. To check that it worked, load the next photo here.
- iPhone: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → “Never”. For a single photo: in the Share sheet tap “Options” and switch off “Location”.
- Samsung: Camera → Settings → “Location tags” → off.
- Google Pixel: Camera → Settings → “Save location” → off.
- Xiaomi / Redmi / POCO: Camera → Settings → “Save location info” → off.
- Huawei / Honor: Camera → Settings → “GPS tag” → off.
- OnePlus / OPPO / realme / vivo: Camera → Settings → “Location” (or “Save location”) → off.
- Android: Camera → Settings → “Geotags” / “Save location” → off. Safer: Settings → Apps → Camera → Permissions → Location → “Don’t allow”.
- Camera or drone: disable GPS logging and the smartphone link in the settings menu; drones keep geotags in the app settings.
Questions
Is it safe to load a photo into Found You?
Yes. The photo is processed in your browser and is not sent to a server: metadata parsing, text recognition, people and object detection, blurring and cleanup all run on your device. The only thing that leaves is the place context, and only when the file carries coordinates (see the next question).
What metadata can be extracted from a photo?
EXIF (camera, date, shooting settings), GPS coordinates, XMP, IPTC (author, captions, rights), ICC (colour profile) and, from PNG, the text blocks where image generators leave their prompt. On top of that, what is visible in the picture itself: text, faces and people, plates, codes, documents.
What is sent to the server when the photo has GPS?
Only the coordinates rounded to 4 decimals (about 11 m), the capture date and time and the country code — to our own server, which asks open sources for the address, the weather, holidays, nearby places and cameras. The photo itself, its name and its full metadata are never sent, and the map opens only on a button press, after saying what that does.
Do messengers and social networks strip metadata themselves?
It varies, and you do not control it: a compressed photo usually loses EXIF, a file sent “as a document” keeps everything. The one reliable way to know what went out is to check the copy: send the photo to yourself and load it here.
Can it tell that a photo was made or edited by AI?
Only when the file says so itself: Content Credentials (C2PA), the IPTC DigitalSourceType term, a Credit line from iOS Clean Up, Magic Editor or Galaxy AI, PNG text blocks from Automatic1111 and ComfyUI. Without a marker the pixel checks catch only crude pastes, and the page says as much.
Is it free, and are there limits?
Free, with no account and no limit on the number of files. One file: up to 50 MB and 120 megapixels (60 on iPhone and iPad); formats JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, GIF, BMP.
Who made this
Found You is made by Morgunov Tech. The service grew out of a simple question: what does a photo sent to a colleague or posted in a listing say about a person without their knowledge. The code is released under the MIT licence; the version and build date are at the bottom of the page.
How to check that the photo goes nowhere
The promise can be checked without taking our word for it. Three ways, from the simplest to the surest.
- Open the browser’s developer tools (F12), the Network tab, and choose a photo. The list will hold only files from this domain: models, fonts, scripts. If the file has GPS, requests to /api/ appear with rounded coordinates, the capture time and the country code — and none with the file name or the picture.
- Analyse one picture so the models download, then switch the internet off (airplane mode) and choose another. Analysis, text recognition and cleanup work without a network; only the address, the weather and the map stay away.
- The page carries a network guard: any request to a foreign host is refused before it is sent, and in production the browser’s security policy (CSP) forbids the same. The source is open, and both can be read: the repository on GitHub.