Sharenting: What Posting About Your Kids Online Reveals to Strangers and Scammers

A 2018 report by the Children’s Commissioner for England estimated that parents post an average of 1,300 photos and videos of a child by the time they turn 13. Most of those posts come from you and your partner, and grandparents and aunts who couldn’t resist sharing that birthday cake moment add even more.

That's not a judgment. Sharing your kids' lives online feels natural. It's how you update family who live far away, celebrate milestones, and connect with other parents going through the same thing. But what looks like a sweet memory to you can look like something very different to a scammer, a predator, or an identity thief.

Here's what your posts actually reveal, and what you can do about it.

What is sharenting?

Sharenting is the habit of parents sharing photos, videos, and personal updates about their children on social media. The word blends "sharing" and "parenting," and it describes something most of us do without much thought.

The scale of it is striking. In a 2021 Security.org survey, 77% of US parents said they had shared stories, videos, or images of their children online, and only 24% said they ask their child's permission every time.

The habit starts early. A 2010 survey of 2,200 mothers in 10 countries by the security firm AVG found that 81% of children under two had some online presence, and 23% of the mothers had posted prenatal scans (34% in the US).

What your posts actually reveal

A single photo rarely exposes much. But posts add up, and the details they contain are more useful to bad actors than many parents realize.

Here's what a typical stream of family posts can reveal:

• Full name. Captions, tags, and birthday shoutouts ("Happy 7th birthday, Lily!") put a name to a face.
• Date of birth. Birthday posts are a common source. Combined with a name, that gives someone two details that identity checks often ask for.
• School name and location. First-day-of-school photos are a tradition for millions of families. The school's sign is often visible. So is the uniform. Sometimes the route.
• Home neighborhood. Geotags, recognizable landmarks in the background, and routine posts ("heading to our usual park") place a family in a very specific area.
• Pet names. A surprising one, but pet names are a common security question answer. Posting about your dog by name hands that over publicly.
• Daily schedule. "School pickup at 3, then soccer practice", a predictable routine is useful information for someone who shouldn't have it.

Kaspersky notes that oversharing creates a digital footprint for the child, and every detail in a post adds to it.

The real risks: from fraud to predators

Identity theft that won't show up for years

Children can be attractive targets for identity theft. They usually have no credit report, and few parents think to check. Fraudsters combine details such as a child's name, date of birth, and address, and the Social Security number is the key item for most credit fraud, according to the FTC. Because nobody is watching, misuse can go unnoticed for years, sometimes until the child applies for a first credit card or loan.

In the US, parents can request a free credit freeze for a child under 16 with each of the three credit bureaus, which helps prevent new credit from being opened in the child's name.

A 2018 Barclays study, as reported at the time, projected that parental oversharing could contribute to as many as 7.4 million incidents of online identity fraud a year against young people by 2030. Barclays has not published its method, so treat it as a projection, not a measurement.

Privacy settings aren't a full solution

This surprises a lot of parents. If your account is set to "friends only," it might feel safe. But University of Southampton researchers, covered by the BBC, found that parents tend to overestimate how much protection their privacy settings actually provide. Tagging, resharing, and third-party apps can all push content beyond your intended audience without you knowing.

In the Southampton survey of 1,013 UK parents, one in six reported negative incidents affecting their children.

AI changes the picture

The Internet Watch Foundation has warned that criminals are now using AI image generators to create harmful imagery from just a handful of ordinary, non-sexual photos. BBC reporting quoted IWF chief executive Kerry Smith: criminals in online forums have "boasted that they can use AI image generators to create life-like nude and sexual imagery of any child they like with only a handful of normal, non-sexual images."

That's a sentence no parent should have to read. It's also why the nature of the risk from sharenting has shifted significantly in the last few years.

There's a secondary AI concern too. Human Rights Watch found in 2024 that identifiable photos of real children appeared in LAION-5B, a large AI training dataset, including 170 photos of Brazilian children and 190 of Australian children in a small sample of the dataset. The photos came from sources such as personal blogs and photo- and video-sharing sites. HRW notes that current AI models can't forget data they were trained on, even if it's later removed from the training dataset.

"Digital kidnapping"

Less known but real: strangers reposting a child's photos and presenting them as their own child. The practice has been reported since at least 2014, mostly through "baby role-play" accounts on Instagram. Some researchers dispute the "kidnapping" label, and there's no reliable data on how common it is. Parents often don't know it's happening.

How to share more safely

None of this means you have to go dark online. It means being a bit more deliberate about what you share, with whom, and how.

Audit your privacy settings, but don't stop there. Review who can see your posts, and turn off location tagging by default. Just know that settings alone don't keep content truly private once other people interact with it.

Think before posting identifying details. School names, neighborhoods, and daily routines don't need to be in the caption. You can share a first-day-of-school photo without naming the school.

Skip the full birthday shoutout. "Happy birthday to my seven-year-old!" is enough. The date and the name together are the real risk.

Be specific about who you share with. Platforms like Facebook let you share with custom lists. Family-only private groups can be safer than a public post or a broad "friends" audience.

Talk to the other adults in your child's life. Grandparents and aunts often post too, sometimes on platforms the parents don't even use. A quick family conversation can get everyone on the same page.

Ask your kids. Once they're old enough to have a preference, it matters. In the EU Kids Online survey, between 3% and 29% of children aged 9 to 16, depending on the country, had asked their parents to remove content about them. That's a trust issue worth taking seriously.

What Guardio thinks about it

We spend a lot of time looking at how personal information gets collected, shared, and misused online. The thing about sharenting is that the risk isn't dramatic in any single moment. No one post feels dangerous. But a profile built from hundreds of posts over years is a different story.

Guardio doesn't manage what you post, but it covers a related risk: the phishing and scam attempts that can follow when personal details are out there. Browsing protection on your computer and phone blocks phishing and scam sites before they open and explains why, and Email Security flags phishing emails that get past the Gmail spam filter. The information you choose to share publicly is upstream of all that, no tool can un-share a photo, and no tool catches everything.

Conclusion

The good news is that a few deliberate habits make a real difference. You don't have to choose between protecting your kids and enjoying the moments. You just have to be a little more thoughtful about who else is watching.

Get a free security scan with Guardio today and stay protected from scams.