How to do it
Protection is mostly a matter of habits about what you post, where, and with what information around it. Here are the concrete steps.
- Close off the public. Check the privacy settings of every profile where your children appear: set everything to private or "friends only." A public photo is reachable by anyone and by the automated systems that harvest images en masse.
- Remove the data that builds a profile. Don't pair the photos with the child's name, the school, the neighborhood, the team, the recurring schedules. These details, added together, let a stranger know who they are and where to find them.
- Limit the frontal, sharp face. A frontal, high-definition close-up is the ideal material for systems that recreate a face. Prefer photos from behind, from the side, at an angle, or with the face barely visible. There are also tools that blur minors' faces before publication: search for them as "face blur" or "blur face."
- Clean the information hidden in the files. Photos taken with a phone contain hidden data (the metadata): place, date, device model. Many social apps remove it on upload, but if you share the file directly (by email, chat, cloud) check that you've removed the location in the camera settings or with a data-removal option.
Check: your profile is safer when a stranger, looking at it, can't work out who your child is, where they go to school and when they can be found there. If this information can't be reconstructed from what you post, you've done the most important part.
A concrete example
Sara used to post every one of her daughter's milestones: first day of school with the sign bearing the institute's name, photos in the team uniform, posts with training schedules. All on a public profile. After reading about children's images being harvested and reused, she cleans up. She sets the profile to private, reviews the contact list keeping only real people, and changes her habits: no more signs with the school's name, no fixed schedules, and for group photos she blurs the faces of children who aren't hers (for whom she doesn't have the parents' consent). She keeps sharing memories, but without leaving a map of her daughter available to anyone.
When it does NOT work (and how to fix it)
If others post photos of your children
Grandparents, friends, the school, the other families at a party: your locked-down profile isn't enough if others share publicly. The remedy is conversation: explicitly ask family and friends not to post identifiable photos of your children without permission, and ask the school what its rules on images are. It's a normal and increasingly common request.
If the photos have been online for years
What was public may already have been copied, and deleting it now doesn't guarantee it disappears everywhere. That's not a reason not to act: remove or make private what you can, reduce from today what you post, and for the most sensitive images check where they appear with a reverse image search. Future protection is worth it anyway.
If you want to keep sharing with distant relatives
Giving up entirely isn't the only way. Use closed channels instead of the public profile: a small private group, a family chat, an album shared only with chosen people. That way grandparents see the grandchild grow up without the photos staying exposed to the whole world and to automated systems.
A tip from someone who actually uses it
Before posting a photo of your child, ask yourself a single question: this image, ten years from now, would my child be happy that it's out there on the internet? It's the filter that cuts most problematic posts, because it shifts the decision from "it's cute right now" to "what digital life am I building for them." Your child can't give consent today: respecting their future privacy is a choice you make on their behalf.
Frequently asked questions
If I set the profile to private, are my photos safe from AI?
You greatly reduce the risk, but "private" doesn't mean locked down: anyone among your contacts can save and re-share, and the platforms themselves can use the content according to their terms. Private is the first layer of protection, not the last: it goes together with a curated contact list, few identifiable details, and caution about what you post.
Is deleting old photos really worth it, if they've maybe already been copied?
Yes, even if it's not a total guarantee. Deleting reduces what is still reachable and prevents new harvesting of that material. Thinking of it as useless because "it's too late now" is exactly the giving-up that abuses count on: every image taken out of circulation is one fewer available to be used.