Huawei’s New Safe Sharing Feature Protects Your Privacy On- and Off-line

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia 3 January 2021: How much private info are you leaking every time you share a photo on social media? It might be a lot more than you think.

Beyond the obvious like your face, your friends’ faces, images of where you are in the background, and other visible clues, every photo also contains hidden content called EXIF data. EXIF data includes all sorts of information about the photo itself, including the camera aperture, shutter, ISO, and white balance you used, and much more sensitive data like the date, time, and location of where the image was taken. When you share your photos, you are also sharing this EXIF data.

How are we supposed to use social media without spreading this info all over the internet? Here is where Huawei’s Photo Safe Sharing feature comes in. Built into their EMUI 11, every time you tap Share in the Huawei photo Gallery on your phone, you can now see a blue icon in the top left corner that will say Privacy options. Just tap the icon, and you can select Remove photo info and Remove location info. 

In the past, you could, in theory, do this with mosaic or other kinds of distortions in image processing apps. But EMUI 11 can now safely remove sensitive information without damaging image quality.

Huawei EMUI 11 officially launched this September on HUAWEI Mate 40 series smartphones. Since then, EMUI 11 and its new security features have been rolled out across more than 10 other smartphone models, including Huawei’s P40, Mate 30, Nova 7, and Nova 6. The Huawei MatePad Pro, MatePad Pro 5G, and MatePad 10.8 can also be upgraded to this new operating system. The Photo Safe Sharing function is available to all users running an EMUI 11 device.