Hello, I can confirm that EXIF data is removed from images when ODK Collect is rotating or scaling.
These operations require conversion of the image file to a Bitmap object in memory, which is transformed then saved over the existing file without taking care of the EXIF data.
For rotation it is visible in this code and for downscaling here
If there is an interest from the community, my team could contribute an improvement to keep EXIF data when scaling down or rotating the original image with these 2 methods.