Potential privacy issue with Canon cameras and copyright info setting

As just about everyone knows, you can enter your custom copyright info in your Canon ILC and it will appear in the EXIF data. If you use the delete copyright information in the camera menu, apparently the deleted information is still actually in the camera, minus one character.

The problem:

Now, you are also privacy-conscious and delete these before selling a camera to a used equipment dealer. You use the camera’s Delete copyright information menu item, thinking that it will remove everything. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Besides not touching owner and IPTC fields at all, it only replaces the very first character of the author name and copyright fields with a zero, leaving your previously set copyright information in the camera.

Laszlo at DIRE Studio has found the “bug”. Full disclosure… this issue is being used to sell his ShutterCount app, but you can also correct this issue manually.

If you are selling a camera, or perhaps you rented a camera, you’ll probably want your copyright information fully removed from the camera.

How to fully delete your owner and IPTC info from the camera:

1. Delete both the owner and IPTC info with EOS Utility.
2. Go to the camera menu option to add your copyright information.
3. Fill the author and copyright fields with either spaces or random characters.
4. In the camera menu, now delete the copyright information.

According to Laszlo, this behavior likely exists on all Canon ILC cameras made since 2007.