Photo Privacy: What is it and why should you care?
*This post may contain affiliate links and I may earn a small commission if you purchase through the link at no additional cost to you.
Imagine this: you take a super cute photo of your daughter in a sweet dress in front of your house and post it on Instagram. Next thing you know someone you aren’t friends with shows up at your house looking for her.
Photos contain an enormous amount of data. Things like location, where you are and when, how many children you have, your likes and dislikes, where you like to travel; I could go on and on and on. The funny thing is that most people assume a privacy “breach” comes only when a big company or software provider is hacked. While that can also happen, most privacy breaches are from user error.
I recently co-taught a course for my association, The Photo Managers, on how to be a Privacy Advocate. The course goes in-depth on a lot of topics surrounding how to stay safe online. Things like using strong passwords, using two factor authentication, installing anti-virus software on your phone. This course is in-depth training on how to stay safe online, and the good news is it’s not just open to members of The Photo Managers, but to anyone interested in protecting themselves online. You can sign up here.
But even if you do “all the things” relating to privacy, there is still a potentially gaping hole in keeping yourself safe.
The gaping hole? YOU. You sharing your photos.
Here’s an example:
I am on an amazing vacation in Uganda.
When I actually have service I send a photo of me on a walking safari with giraffes to my friend Joan, telling her all about our fabulous trip.
Joan’s brother Mark is considering going to Africa, so Joan forwards the photo to him.
Mark forwards the photo to his buddy Chris, because Uganda is on Chris’s bucket list of places to visit.
Chris is a social media influencer, who posts the photo on his social channels so his hundreds of followers can see where he might go next.
And from there? Who knows. But now Chris’s followers can reverse google my face to find out who I am, they know I am out of the country, and a whole host of other things I might not want shared all over social media to Chris’s millions of followers.
As soon as you share a photo, you have lost control over it forever.
How can you share your photos and stay safe?
What are your options? You can decide never to share anything ever again. That would certainly keep all of the information in your photos private. But that’s not particularly realistic. Most of us want to share pieces of our lives with friends and family, so I just ask that before you share a photo or post on social media you consider the following:
Is there anything private in the photo?
Is there any information in the photo that you would not want the whole world to see?
Do you trust who you are sharing with not to pass your photo to someone else or post it on social media?
Does the photo give away sensitive information about you, such as your address, your kid’s school, your current location out of town, or a birthday?
If so, consider keeping it to yourself, or at least blacking out the private information. You can also strip the metadata - all that stuff baked into the photo itself such as when and where it was taken - out of the photo before you share it, removing at least some of the private information.
Photos of kids and sensitive information
One more example that I see ALL THE TIME on social media. A photo of a child posing in front of a car holding their brand new driver’s license. With all the information that a driver’s license contains posted for the world to see, and often the license plate, and the DMV in the background. Now anyone who sees the photo knows:
Note that this is a stock image not anyone I know.
his driver’s license number
his date of birth
his address
his full name
his height, weight, eye color, and hair color
the license plate of someone in his family along with the make and model of their car
and plenty more.
My ask of you? Just to start thinking about what it is that you share and who you share it with.
For more tips on staying safe online sign up for my newsletter and receive my Photo Privacy: Top 8 Tips free download.