this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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I always remove this data from my screenshots before sharing, but is there any way to prevent this from happening in the first place? I've searched and searched, but all I can find is information about how to remove the data after the fact, which I already know how to do, but it would sure be nice if it never got added in the first place. Thanks.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (17 children)

Is this all the metadata it adds?

Because the information you've shown here is not at all sensitive. It's just the timestamp, Android version and time zone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (15 children)

I knew I'd get a comment like this eventually. There's no rational reason it should be adding this data at all, and there should be a way to disable this behavior. The camera I use doesn't add this data when I take a photo, and there's no reason taking a screenshot should do so.

The software version doesn't just say "Android 14" either. It looks very specific.

No matter how you look at it, this is not an acceptable way for a device to behave, with no way to change it in settings.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (10 children)

The software version doesn’t just say “Android 14” either. It looks very specific.

Yeah, it's likely a rather precise Android version.

So what? What does the Android version you use reveal about you? What part of your threat model does it violate?

Here, you can have the exact version of my phone: lineage_FP4-userdebug 13 TQ3A.230901.001 2023111915 test-keys. Can you identify me now?

(In my case, you theoretically actually could because my version is unique because I homebrew my Android but if you didn't know that, it'd look like any other FP4 with [email protected] on it which is why I'm not at all worried.)

No matter how you look at it, this is not an acceptable way for a device to behave, with no way to change it in settings.

Adding useful metadata that reveals no actual data about the user is a great feature and not worth adding a setting for; especially not in the UI.

I didn't know about this before but I'll look out for that whenever sends a bug report of a mobile app with screenshot as it might include the device and Android version used which is super useful info to have when troubleshooting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

So ... do you have a way to stop screenshots from saving metadata to my screenshots or not? I've indicated my wishes. If you don't want to help, then please ignore the post.

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