Kid Photo Safety Check

Sharing family photos is one of the joys of the internet — this tool exists to keep it joyful, not to scare you off posting. Most risks in a child's photo are easy to miss simply because you're looking at the smile, not the background. A school logo on a sweater, a house number behind the birthday candles, a street sign at the park: small details that tell strangers more than you intended.

The biggest invisible one is location metadata. When your phone's camera has location access, every photo is quietly stamped with GPS coordinates — often accurate to a few meters. Social apps usually strip this when you post, but the original file keeps it, and anyone you send the original to (a group chat, an email) can read exactly where it was taken: home, school, the playground.

The fix is wonderfully boring: check before you post, strip location when it matters, and turn off location access for your camera app. Thirty seconds here, peace of mind after.