Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of terms

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of the website fawanews.ink and the Image Metadata Viewer tool it provides (together, “the Service”). By visiting the site or using the tool, you agree to these Terms.

If you do not agree with any part of them, please do not use the Service. Your continued use is taken as acceptance of the version of these Terms published at the time.

These Terms should be read together with our Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Cookie Policy, which form part of your agreement with us.

2. Description of service

The Service is a free online utility that reads metadata stored inside image files. When you select an image, the tool examines the file and reports the information it can identify — for example file details, image dimensions, EXIF fields, camera and lens data, timestamps, GPS coordinates and other embedded metadata, to the extent that the file contains them.

The tool is informational. It reads files; it does not edit, repair, convert, optimise or remove metadata from them, and it does not store your files or keep a record of what you have viewed.

No account or registration is required, and the Service is offered free of charge. We may add, alter or withdraw features at any time, as described in section 17.

3. Eligibility

You may use the Service if you are legally capable of entering into a binding agreement in your country of residence. If you are a minor under the law that applies to you, you may use the Service only with the involvement of a parent or guardian who accepts these Terms on your behalf.

You must also have the right to use any file you open with the tool, as set out in section 6.

4. Permitted use

You may use the Service for any lawful purpose, personal or commercial, including but not limited to:

• Inspecting your own photographs to review capture settings or confirm dimensions.
• Checking what information a file carries before you publish or share it.
• Professional work such as photography, design, development, journalism, archiving, research or education.
• Examining images you are authorised to examine as part of your work.

You may also share links to the Service freely, and you may keep or reuse the metadata reports the tool generates from your own files.

5. Prohibited use

You must not use the Service:

• For any purpose that is unlawful in your jurisdiction, or to assist anyone else in unlawful activity.
• To examine images you have obtained without authorisation, or to extract information from images belonging to others in a way that infringes their rights.
• To stalk, harass, locate, intimidate, dox or otherwise harm any person, including by using location data found in an image.
• To infringe copyright, trade secrets, privacy rights or any other rights of a third party.
• To attempt to interfere with, disrupt, overload or gain unauthorised access to the website, its hosting or any connected system.
• To copy, scrape, republish or redistribute the site’s code or content as your own service, or to remove attribution and present the tool as your own.
• To upload or process content that is illegal to possess, including material that depicts the abuse or exploitation of children.
• To misrepresent metadata results as verified or authenticated evidence, or to present altered results as output of this Service.

We may restrict or block access where we reasonably believe these Terms are being broken.

6. User responsibilities

You are responsible for the files you choose to open with the tool and for what you do with the results. In particular, you confirm that:

• You own each file you examine, or have permission to examine it.
• Your use complies with the laws that apply to you, including privacy and data protection laws where the image contains personal information about someone else.
• You will handle any personal data revealed by a file — such as GPS coordinates, an author name or a device serial number — lawfully and responsibly.
• You keep your own backups. The tool reads files rather than modifying them, but you remain responsible for the safety of your originals.
• You will verify anything important through an independent source before relying on it, as explained in sections 8 and 9.

7. Image files and metadata

You keep all rights in the images you open with the tool. Using the Service grants us no licence, ownership or interest in your files, and no rights in the metadata they contain.

As currently implemented, the tool reads your file inside your own browser. Image files are not uploaded to the website, and neither the file nor the metadata read from it is stored, logged or transmitted by the Service. This is described more fully in the Privacy Policy.

Because processing happens on your device, you remain in control of your files throughout. It also means we hold nothing to recover on your behalf: if you clear a result or close the page, it is gone and must be generated again from your own file.

Reading metadata does not remove it. Any information found in a file stays attached to that file and continues to travel with it wherever you send it.

8. Accuracy and limitations

The tool reports what it finds in a file and translates recognised fields into readable labels. It does not verify that those values are true. Metadata describes what a file says about itself, which is not the same as what actually happened.

Several limitations follow from this and from how image formats work:

• Metadata can be edited. Any field can be changed, added or removed with widely available software, so metadata is not proof of origin, authorship, time or place.
• Devices vary. Manufacturers record different fields, apply standards inconsistently, and sometimes write values that are incorrect or misleading.
• Timestamps can be wrong. A device with an unset or mistaken clock, or one used across time zones, will record times that do not match reality.
• Interpretation involves judgement. Some values are shown as recorded because their meaning is manufacturer-specific and not publicly documented.

Results must not be treated as evidence. If you need metadata for legal, forensic, investigative, journalistic, insurance or any other consequential purpose, have it examined by a qualified professional using appropriate tools. The Service is not designed or offered for those purposes.

9. No guarantee of metadata detection

We do not guarantee that the tool will find any metadata in a given file, or that what it finds will be complete or correct. An empty or partial result is a normal outcome, not a malfunction, and it does not prove that a file never contained the information you are looking for.

Metadata may be missing or incompletely reported because:

• The file never contained it — screenshots and software-generated graphics have no camera data to record.
• It was removed elsewhere. Social networks, messaging apps, editors and web export routines routinely strip metadata.
• The format does not support it. GIF and BMP carry no EXIF data at all, and PNG only rarely does.
• The data is stored in a proprietary or undocumented structure, such as a manufacturer’s maker note, which the tool reports as present rather than decoding.
• The file uses a container the tool does not currently parse, such as HEIC or AVIF.
• The file is damaged, truncated or unusually structured.
• Your browser or device does not support part of what the tool needs.

The absence of a field in the results means only that the tool did not report it. No conclusion should be drawn from that absence.

10. Intellectual property

The website, its design, text, layout, and the code that makes the tool work are owned by the operator of fawanews.ink or its licensors, and are protected by copyright and other applicable laws.

You may use the Service and view the site as intended, and you may quote or link to it with attribution. You may not copy, adapt, republish or redistribute substantial parts of the site or its code, or use them to operate a competing service, without written permission.

Product names, trademarks and format names mentioned on the site — camera makes, file formats, software titles — belong to their respective owners and are referred to only for description and identification. No affiliation or endorsement is implied.

Nothing in this section affects your rights in your own images or in the metadata reports generated from them.

11. Third-party services

The Service is delivered using third-party infrastructure such as hosting, and may use other providers for security, form handling, analytics or advertising. Those providers operate under their own terms and privacy policies, which we do not control.

The site also links to external websites. One example is the mapping service offered when an image contains GPS coordinates: following that link is your choice, and it opens a site governed by its own terms. We are not responsible for the content, accuracy, availability or practices of any external site, and a link does not imply endorsement.

12. Privacy

How the Service handles information is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms. It explains that image files are read in your browser and are not uploaded, and it covers technical information, cookies, retention and your rights.

Use of cookies is described further in the Cookie Policy. By using the Service you agree to the handling of information described in those documents.

13. Availability

We aim to keep the Service available and working, but we do not promise uninterrupted or error-free access. The site may be unavailable or degraded because of maintenance, updates, hosting problems, network faults, security incidents, or events outside our reasonable control.

Access may be suspended, limited or withdrawn at any time, for any part of the Service, without notice and without liability to you. The Service is free of charge, and no service level, uptime target or support response time is offered or implied.

14. Disclaimer of warranties

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. In particular, we make no warranty that:

• The Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free.
• Any metadata will be detected in a given file, or that detected metadata will be complete, accurate or correctly interpreted.
• Results are suitable for legal, forensic, evidential or other consequential use.
• Defects will be corrected, or that the Service is free of harmful components.

No advice or information obtained through the Service creates any warranty not stated here. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you; where that is the case, our warranties are limited to the minimum extent permitted by law, and your statutory consumer rights are unaffected.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither the operator of fawanews.ink nor anyone associated with the Service shall be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or business opportunity, arising out of or connected with your use of or inability to use the Service.

This includes, without limitation, loss or damage arising from:

• Reliance on metadata results that turn out to be incomplete, absent or incorrect.
• Decisions taken, or not taken, on the basis of information shown by the tool.
• Disclosure of information contained in your own files, including location data.
• Interruption, suspension or withdrawal of the Service.
• The acts, omissions, content or availability of any third-party service or linked site.

Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded, our total aggregate liability to you for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid to use it — which for a free service is nothing — or the minimum amount required by applicable law.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

16. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the operator of fawanews.ink from any claims, demands, losses, liabilities, damages, costs and reasonable legal fees arising out of or connected with:

• Your use or misuse of the Service.
• Your breach of these Terms or of any applicable law.
• Your infringement of the rights of any third party, including privacy and intellectual property rights.
• Files you examine that you were not authorised to examine, and any use you make of the information they contain.

This obligation survives your stopping use of the Service.

17. Changes to the service

The Service may be developed over time. We may add, change, restrict or remove features, support new image formats or discontinue support for others, and we may suspend or discontinue the Service entirely, at any time and without notice.

If the way image files are handled ever changes materially — for instance if any part of the processing were to move to a server — the Privacy Policy will be updated before that change goes live, and the tool page will say so plainly.

18. Changes to these terms

These Terms may be revised to reflect changes to the Service, to the law, or to how the website operates. The “last updated” date at the top of the page shows when the current version took effect.

Revised Terms apply from the moment they are published here. Continuing to use the Service after a change means you accept the revised Terms, so it is worth checking this page from time to time. If you do not accept a change, stop using the Service.

19. Governing law

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or in connection with them or with the Service are governed by the laws of [INSERT YOUR COUNTRY OR STATE], without regard to its conflict of law rules. The courts of [INSERT YOUR COUNTRY OR STATE] shall have jurisdiction, subject to any mandatory rights you have under the law of your own country of residence.

If you are a consumer, this clause does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory consumer law in your place of residence, and it does not prevent you from bringing proceedings where that law entitles you to do so.

If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, that provision shall be limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the remaining provisions continue in full force. Our failure to enforce any right is not a waiver of it. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and Disclaimer, form the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service.

20. Contact

Questions about these Terms, including reports of misuse of the Service, can be sent through the contact page.

Website: fawanews.ink
Contact: fawanews.ink/contact/

Related pages: Privacy Policy · Cookie Policy · Disclaimer