I’m just curious to see if there is a popular image hosting website that most folks use on this forum for hosting pictures within their threads? I’m about a decade out of sync for using such said topic.
Please share what one you use.
Thanks
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I don’t think it is needed in this forum, is it?
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I don’t think he wants to use it for the forum, rather he’s looking for suggestions from within the forum.
Obvious ones are things like imgur. However, this being the Purism forum, you may be looking for aomething built with Free Software that respects your privacy.
I don’t know if such a service exists.
I’d beinterested in one like this, that maybe strips out JPEG EXIF data upon upload or similar things.
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Good point but that’s called (non-existent?) web browser functionality. Privacy requirements aren’t really met if the destination web site strips out the JPEG metadata. It has to be stripped out before it leaves your computer. Facebook strips the metadata and I don’t think anyone would describe that as a privacy-respecting web site.
Are there any browser extensions / add-ons that do this automatically?
Good point. Otherwise you must place 100% trust in the service.
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There was an image site called “privacyinfinity” (i.privacyinfinity.com) that stripped down EXIF data and uploaded it, it contained no trackers or third party javascript. But it shutdown a while ago. I wish it could come back! :'c
Otherwise I use:
Postimage - Doesn’t contain any third party javascript trackers.
But use Google Cookies, to serve ads and analytics. Which is bäääääd.
Remarketing with Google AdSense
Google Display Network Impression Reporting
Demographics and Interests Reporting
DoubleClick Platform Integration
But they say, “We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your Personally Identifiable Information unless we provide users with advance notice.”
But clearly they can sell it: “We allow third-party behavioral tracking by trusted partners.”
But the Terms of Use:
“What cannot be uploaded to Postimage.org servers:”
- Copyrighted images if you don’t own the copyright and are not licensed to do so.
- Violence, “hate speech” (i.e. demeaning race, gender, age, religious or sexual orientation, etc.), or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization.
- Images that are threatening, harassing, defamatory, or that encourage violence or crime.
- Any images that might be illegal in the USA or EU, such as child sexual abuse, or public exposure (“doxxing”).
- Adult imagery is not allowed.
I couldn’t bother with finding a good image/file host, so I just dump everything to my self-hosted website, happysmash27.me, in the /Upload directory.
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Anyway,
exiv2 delete xyz.jpg
will strip all the metadata.
You would typically want to do that before upload to an image hosting web site when it is a web site that offers a service to the public, or even when it is your own web site if the web site serves to members of the public. (That is, when it is your own web site, it is easier to strip the metadata on upload than it is to strip the metadata when served out.)
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https://alternativeto.net/software/exiv2/
what you think about https://bayimg.com/? For the creators of the Pirate Bay
thanks, did not know that tool. What’s the difference to ExifTool?
Honest answer? exiv2 is installed on my computer and exiftool isn’t.
exiv2 comes with my distro and it has always been able to do what I have needed, so I haven’t gone looking for anything that might be able to do more.
Like @happysmash27 I self-host. It doesn’t matter what assurances some other service provides, many questions will arise.
- what is their business model? how do they make money? will they therefore still be around in 1 year? 2 years?
- what is their hosting environment? VPS? dedicated servers? what software? is it open source? is it secure?
- do they do backups?
- are there any copyright implications from using the service? are they claiming a non-exclusive unlimited right to use and keep images?
- is there such a thing as a true delete?
- what country are they located in? their servers located in? what is their attitude towards voluntary cooperation with governments? lawyers who are trying it on?
- do you trust them?
Based on the above criteria, you would have to say that the FAQ for bayimg.com is woefully inadequate.
what distro do you use?
Can you paste frequent exiv2 commands from your history? The manpage not very good
Ubuntu
Clarifying “comes with my distro” though … I mean it is in the distro’s repositories (no need to add third party repositories) but is not installed by default.
display
exiv2 x.jpg
exiv2 print x.jpg
exiv2 print -p a x.jpg
exiv2 -p a -g Date x.jpg
modify
exiv2 -M"set name value" x.jpg
adjust date
exiv2 -D +365 x.jpg
strip
exiv2 delete x.jpg
exiv2 delete *.jpg
(be careful with that last one!!!)
Powerful programs usually come with obscurity. 
As an alternative to exiv2, I have sometimes used identify to display image metadata, which command is in the ImageMagick package.
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why?
I wish to exact this command in my photos folder. Remove that metadata *******
Because you may want to keep the metadata on your copy of the image. Metadata is useful to you. You just don’t want to share the metadata with all and sundry.
So let’s say you have your master folder of images but you are going to upload a selection of 10 of those images to some sharing web site. So you copy the 10 images into a new empty temporary folder, execute that command in the new folder in order to strip the metadata, upload the images, then delete the 10 images and the new folder - which is why it would be so much more convenient if a browser extension did it for you automatically, maybe a Thunderbird extension too.
or maybe a script that auto-backs-up BEFORE you nuke the metadata …
“Against all the evil that Hell can conjure, all the wickedness that mankind can produce, we will send unto them… only you. Rip and tear, until it is done.”
exiv2 is the slayer in this case …