Privacy

Purge Personal Data

On Windows, select all files, right click, properties, details tab. Click the blue link that says “Remove Properties and Personal Information” and follow the prompts.

Reset Date and Time Metadata

On Windows, this is difficult to do using higher level programming languages like Python, so it’s easiest to use PowerShell.

(Get-Item hello.txt).lastwritetime=$(Get-Date "8/28/2018 2:35 am")
(Get-Item goodbye.txt).creationtime=$(Get-Date "11/16/2077 9:34 pm")
(Get-Item *dds.txt).lastaccesstime=$(Get-Date "5/21/2006 7:15 am")

Last access time can get immediately updated, so careful with clicking on it after purging.

Purge EXIF data from Images

Python is easiest using the piexif package

import piexif
from PIL import Image

# open the image
img = Image.open("image.jpg")

# remove the EXIF data
exif_dict = piexif.load(img.info["exif"])
exif_dict.clear()
exif_bytes = piexif.dump(exif_dict)
img.save("image_without_exif.jpg", exif=exif_bytes)