Remove meta data from files

For security reasons you should remove the meta data from files, which are publicly accessible.

We will use mat2 for this, so you should install it first:

apt install mat2

Now you can modify the snippet below:

#!/bin/bash

# Source folder where your files are located
source_folder="/home/pappz/Downloads/metatest"

# Check if the source folder exists
if [ ! -d "$source_folder" ]; then
  echo "Source folder does not exist: $source_folder"
  exit 1
fi

# modify the file with mat2, remove metadata and move it back to the original name
modify_file_function() {
    # Get the file name and extension
    filename=$(basename "$2")
    extension="${filename##*.}"
    filename_noext="${filename%.*}"
    # Run mat2 to clean the file
    mat2 "$file"
    # Move the cleaned file back to the original name with the modified extension
    mv "$1/$filename_noext.cleaned.$extension" "$1/$filename_noext.$extension"
}

# Iterate through files in the source folder
get_into_folder_function() {
  for file in "$1"/*; do
    # if it is a file, then modify it
    if [ -f "$file" ]; then
      modify_file_function "$1" "$file" 
    fi
    # if it is a folder, then get into it
    if [ -d "$file" ]; then
      # make it recursive papa, yeah! 
      get_into_folder_function "$file"
    fi
  done
}

get_into_folder_function "$source_folder"

echo "Cleaning and moving completed."

Here is the gist for the above script: https://gist.github.com/zoparga/93739df77d444e735c6cdf6309b3b936

Now you just need to schedule a cron job, which will check the files from time to time.