What information about my child is safe to post publicly?

The general rule is: anything that cannot be used to verify identity or answer a security question. A photo of your child at a playground with no signs, names, or location data visible is low risk. A birthday post that includes their full name, age, school, and a view of your street is high risk even if the photo itself is innocent.

Does it matter if my account is private?

Yes, but less than most parents assume. Screenshots can be shared. Followers change. Platforms change their default settings. Private is meaningfully safer than public, but it is not the same as controlled. The identifier guidance applies regardless of account settings.

What does the pet's name have to do with my child's safety?

Pet names appear in photos constantly, and they are one of the standard security questions used by banks, email providers, and payment services for account recovery. If your pet's name is visible across your feed and someone knows your child's name and school, they may have enough to attempt account recovery on your behalf or your child's behalf later.

At what age should I start asking my child's permission before posting?

From the age they can understand the question, which for most children is three to four years old. The habit matters more than the exact age. A child who has always been asked will grow up with a different relationship to consent than one who was not.

How do I ask family not to share photos of my child without it being awkward?

Say it once, directly, not as a rule but as a request: "I would really appreciate it if you checked with me before reposting photos of [name]." Most people say yes immediately. Send it in a message so it is written down. You do not need to apologise for it.

What is sharenting and why does it matter for identity fraud?

Sharenting is the practice of regularly sharing information about children on social media. It matters for identity fraud because the combination of name, date of birth, school, address, and pet name that parents commonly post is identical to the set of security questions used by financial institutions. Barclays estimated in 2018 that sharenting-related data would account for around two thirds of identity fraud against young people by 2030.

Are there laws that protect my child's right to have posts about them removed?

Yes, in some jurisdictions. As of 2026, several US states including Illinois, California, Minnesota, Utah, and Tennessee have passed legislation giving minors, and in some cases adults who were minors when the content was posted, the right to request removal. Similar legislation is developing in the EU and UK. The direction of travel is clear: more laws, broader scope, shorter timelines for removal.

Child privacy checklist for parents -- Build with AI Club

Quick summary

Most advice about children and social media tells parents to disappear. That is not practical for anyone who works publicly, runs a business online, or lives far from family. This checklist is built on a different idea: you can keep sharing everything that matters, as long as you separate the moment from the identifier. The moment is the joy. The identifier is the narrow set of details that make a specific child findable, verifiable, and impersonatable.

The core principle: share the moment, withhold the identifier

These are two different acts. A study of 493 American parents published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction found that parents frequently failed to separate ordinary photo sharing from posting identifying information about their children. It feels like one act. It is two, and the entire practical answer lives in the gap.

The moment is the pride, the mess, the milestone, the fact that today was hard or today was wonderful. Post it. It is your life too.

The identifier is the narrow set of details that make one specific child findable, verifiable, and impersonatable. These are what to withhold.

What are the five child identifiers to protect online?

Here is why these five and not others. Open the password recovery page of any bank or email provider and read the security questions: first pet's name, school attended, street you grew up on, date of birth, mother's maiden name.

Now read a typical birthday post. It contains four of the five, and the fifth is usually one post away.

Barclays estimated in 2018 that this pattern would account for roughly two thirds of identity fraud against young people by 2030. Around 30% of parents use their child's name in their own passwords.

Checklist: The five identifiers to withhold

Full name. Use a first name only, an initial, or a nickname on public posts.
Exact date of birth. "She turned six this week" carries the same joy and none of the data.
School. This includes the school name, the uniform, the logo, the teacher's name, and any classroom sign visible in the background of a photo.
Home address. Do not post the street name, house number, or a recognisable view of your own front door.
The pet's name. It appears in countless photos and it is a security question in almost every account recovery system.

Photo safety checklist for parents who post online

Check the frame before posting. Look for signs, badges, screens, addresses, and mail on the counter.
Turn off location data on your camera, and verify that your platform actually strips it. Many parents assume it does.
Prefer photos from behind, from the side, at a distance, or in motion. You lose less than you expect from the image.
Avoid bath photos, toilet training photos, and any state of undress, at any age, in any context, regardless of how innocent the moment was.
Move your archive to a shared album with named people. Keep your public feed for highlights only.

That last item solves more than any other on this list. Not every photograph needs an audience of everyone you have ever met. A shared album with twelve people gives you the same warmth at a fraction of the exposure.

How to audit your audience and privacy settings

Privacy settings do very little if you have not reviewed who is actually on the other side of them.

Read your entire follower list once. Remove anyone you cannot place.
Check whether your account is set to public. A significant share of parents' accounts are, often without them realising.
Check who can see posts other people have tagged you in.
Ask family and close friends not to repost photos of your child without checking with you first. Say it once, plainly, without apology. Most people will simply agree.

Password checklist: close the loop between posting and account security

This takes ten minutes and directly addresses the connection between what you post and how accounts get compromised.

Remove your child's name, birthday, school, and pet name from your own passwords.
Update any security question answers that are publicly discoverable from your social media feed.
Do the same audit on your partner's accounts, because your feed exposes their security answers too.

How to build consent habits with your child

Start asking your child before you post, from the age they can answer.
Accept no without negotiating.
Once a year, go back through your feed and delete what you would not post today.

You are not only protecting data here. You are teaching your child that their image belongs to them. That is a lesson they will need more than previous generations did.

There is also a legal dimension arriving. Illinois moved first in 2023, then California and Minnesota in 2024, Utah in 2025, and Tennessee's law took effect in July 2026, with roughly sixteen states introducing versions of the same legislation. Minnesota's requires content to be deleted on request, either by a minor aged thirteen or older whose likeness appears in it, or by an adult who was under eighteen when their likeness was used. Laws in other countries are moving in the same direction.

The question to ask before every post

Am I sharing data that could be used to identify my child, by someone my child never agreed to?

If the answer is yes, you do not have to cancel the post. You have to edit it. Crop the sign. Change the caption. Use the nickname. Remove the date.

A note on AI tools that want access to your child's image

Every new app that requests access to your camera roll, every AI toy that wants your child's voice, every service offering to generate video of your family: let someone else find the problems first. The tool will still be there in six months, and by then someone will have read the terms and reported what they found.

This checklist accompanies part two of a three-part series on using AI without paying a price you never agreed to. Part one covers how to audit your AI tool settings. Part three covers what the AI race is costing your capacity to think.

Build with AI teaches non-technical professionals to use AI without handing over more than they meant to. Five live sessions a week. Applications are open.

The child privacy checklist for parents