Online privacy needs more than a blurred face

The face is blurred. The caption names the school. The location tag says you're there right now.

You can see how that happens. You've opened an editor, moved the little patch into place and exported the picture. You've done the privacy thing. Except the caption is still sitting there, helpfully telling everyone what the picture no longer does.

I think this is the limitation we have to be clear about when we build a face-blurring tool. An edit gives you visible evidence that you've done something. The other parts of privacy are much less satisfying to look at. Nobody admires a properly secured email account.

But if that email account holds the keys to your family photo library, it deserves attention before the next round of edits. So let's put the jobs in an order that makes sense.

First, decide what you're trying to keep private

“Be more private online” is a rather exhausting project. Where do you even finish?

Try making the job specific: “We don't want strangers connecting our child's name, face and school.” Or: “We want the grandparents to see these pictures without the pictures becoming public posts.”

The first means checking names and locations alongside the face, including what you've shared before. The second means choosing recipients and agreeing on what they can do with the file. Now you have a reason for each setting you're about to change.

For our Baby Acrobatics videos on Instagram, the activity is what we want people to see. That gives us a reason to cover faces and inspect the rest of the frame. It doesn't mean our family becomes invisible online.

Protect the place where the originals live

A covered face on Instagram doesn't help if somebody gets into the account holding the original. Start with the email account that receives your password-reset messages, then your photo storage and social accounts.

Use a different password for each account and keep your devices and software updated. A password manager can keep track of those passwords for you.

Then look for two-factor authentication in the account's security settings. This adds a second check when you sign in, so a stolen password alone isn't enough. The FTC recommends it. For the second check, it favours an authenticator app, which generates sign-in codes, or a physical security key you use with your device. Both provide more protection than codes sent by text or email. FTC account-security advice

While you're there, look at signed-in devices and recovery details. That old tablet you handed to someone else may deserve a sign-out. An email address you no longer control shouldn't remain the route back into the account.

These are unglamorous jobs. They protect more than the next picture.

Look at the people behind the audience label

“Friends” is a setting. It isn't necessarily a good description of everyone in the list.

Open it and look. The same goes for a family album or group chat that has gradually grown. Choose the audience for this picture, rather than inheriting whichever audience you used last time.

If the point is to share with a small circle, make it a small circle and talk about reposting. Our guide to sharing family photos privately covers messages, albums and the copies people can keep. An app can deliver a photo privately; the person receiving it still decides whether to put it somewhere else.

Remove access you didn't mean to give

A simple editor asking for your precise location is a good moment to pause. So is an app asking to see the whole photo library when you only want to edit one picture. Where your device offers narrower access, choose it. Review old permissions and remove apps you no longer use.

Then look at the tracking controls in your browser and the services you use regularly. Websites and apps can record what you do and connect some of that activity across services. Cookies are small pieces of data saved by your browser; third-party cookies come from a service other than the site you're visiting and can be used for tracking.

Blocking those cookies and using the available privacy controls can reduce collection. They don't stop every route: an ad blocker, for example, doesn't necessarily block all tracking. The FTC explains these controls and their limits.

You don't need to fix the entire advertising industry this afternoon. Start with access you didn't intend to grant and settings you can actually change.

Read the picture and the caption together

By this point you've dealt with the account and the audience. Now inspect what you're about to send.

There are two kinds of checking here. Software can inspect metadata: information stored inside the photo file, such as the place it was taken. It can't decide for you that the recognisable gate behind your child gives away the nursery. Use the photo metadata guide for the file information, then look at the actual picture, listen to the audio and read the caption.

Also consider the posts around it. A name in one, a school in another and a regular location in a third can tell a story you didn't intend any single post to tell.

Give the family a rule they can repeat

You can do all of this and still have a relative publish the original. So say what you're asking for, in words they can use next time:

Please ask us before posting photos of the kids, and don't include their school or location.

Keep the rule somewhere people can find it. Revisit it when someone joins the group, when a child starts school, and as the children become able to express their own preferences. The family sharing scripts can help with the awkward bit.

Then make the face edit and check the finished file. That's where our tool belongs: inside a routine that also protects the originals, limits the audience and pays attention to what the rest of the post says.

Choose one job you can finish

If you're unsure where to begin, use the account holding your original photos. Check its sign-in protection, recovery details and connected devices. Leave yourself a note of anything you couldn't resolve, rather than calling the whole account checked.

If that account is already in order, choose one of these instead:

• An album: read the member list, remove access you no longer intend to give and check whether a share link still opens it to others. Send the family rule if it's only been assumed until now.
• The next post: inspect the saved picture or video, listen to the sound, read the caption and check the audience. Change the parts you wouldn't choose to share; leave the post unpublished if you're still unsure.

Finish that job before opening another settings page. You'll have a specific change to point to, and a much clearer idea of what still needs attention.

There is a more personal side to how I make these choices, too. In this essay about faces, attention and the evil eye, I explain why we show our children in Baby Acrobatics while keeping their faces, names and many other details private, and where my own spiritual intuition comes into it.