How to Remove Photo Metadata Before You Sell Online (Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Craigslist)

Why it matters for a listing

You often take the photo of an item at home. If the camera saved the location, the file holds the GPS coordinates of your home. The file can also hold the date and time, and the model of your phone. EXIF data can contain this information. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has written about it since 2012. If a site passes the original file to the buyer, the buyer can read it.

What we found for each site

We checked these sites on 2026-11-06. None of them states a guarantee. Treat this as "unknown", not as "safe".

• Facebook Marketplace. We found no Meta document that says if Marketplace removes EXIF data from listing photos. Meta's Marketplace help says that it may enhance listing photos and videos to improve their quality. It does not mention metadata. A test from 2026 found that Facebook removed the GPS location from a normal post photo, but this was not a Marketplace listing. The location that you choose for the listing is a separate setting.
• eBay. We found no official eBay statement and no independent test. The only statement that we found is from a volunteer Community Mentor in a locked forum thread. The volunteer wrote that eBay strips EXIF data. A volunteer is not eBay staff.
• Craigslist. The Craigslist help pages and privacy policy say nothing about photo metadata. A Craigslist page about its software says its image service handles the orientation of photos from EXIF data. It does not say that it removes the GPS location. Websites that say that Craigslist strips metadata gave no proof that we could confirm.

One test page also says that many marketplaces pass the original file on unchanged. We could not verify this claim. Together, these findings lead to one rule: remove the metadata yourself, before you upload.

Method 1: Remove the metadata with WipePic

1. Open WipePic in your browser on your phone or computer.
2. Select the photos of your item, or drag them into the page.
3. WipePic shows what it found in each photo, for example the location, the device and the capture time.
4. Download the cleaned copies and upload those to your listing.

WipePic removes the location, the device details, the capture time, the author and rights fields, the editing history, comments, thumbnails and embedded C2PA data. It keeps the orientation and the colour profile, so the photo displays correctly. The photos stay on your device. WipePic does not send them to a server.

WipePic reads JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, GIF, TIFF and DNG files. It cleans up to 300 files in one batch, and each file can be up to 50 MB.

Method 2: Remove only the location with your phone

If you only want to leave out the location, use the options of your phone. See the guides for iPhone and Android. The camera details and the date stay in the file with this method.

Limits

• Cleaning a photo does not change what you can see in it. Check the background for a house number, a street sign, a package label, a serial number or your face before you upload.
• The location that you choose for the listing stays visible to buyers. Choose it with care.
• This guide covers the photo file only. It does not cover what a site knows about your account or your device.

Sources

Checked on 2026-11-06. These are not official statements by the sites, except where noted.

• Hexloom Labs: Facebook Marketplace photo location (found no Meta statement; quotes Meta's Marketplace help page)
• Hexloom Labs: Craigslist photo EXIF (found no Craigslist statement)
• eBay Community: Metadata on photos uploaded to eBay (a volunteer Community Mentor, not eBay staff)
• Narqo: Social media metadata test 2026 (tested 2026-10-20; Facebook post photo)
• Meta: Marketplace listing location
• EFF: A picture is worth a thousand words, including your location (2012)