Pixelating children’s photos: How to protect your kids online

Facebook, Instagram & Co.: Social media has many advantages and can also be a lot of fun. But what once lands on the web can quickly spread uncontrollably – so you should always think carefully about which pictures you upload. It is always best to blur your children’s faces in photos. There are a few handy free apps and programs for that.

Small children in particular cannot yet decide for themselves whether they want to be seen on the Internet. Even older kids may not yet be able to assess the significance of a publicly posted photo on Facebook or Instagram. It is therefore up to you to handle your uploads responsibly in order to protect the identity and personal rights of the little ones.

You have several options for this: Pixelating faces in photos and deleting metadata from image files. We’ll show you how it works – on mobile phones and PCs alike.

Make face unrecognizable via app

You probably take most photos on your phone, so it makes sense to do the editing directly on the device using a free app like face blur . Although this is not available in German, it is very easy to use.

Simply take a new photo or load one from your gallery into the app. Faces are automatically recognized in a very short time and listed individually under the picture, so that you can pixelate each person in the photo individually. In addition, you can mark your own areas, for example street signs or license plates.

The app offers three different methods: Blur, Pixelate and Blacken. The latter method is the safest, since clever special tools can now also make heavily pixelated image areas recognizable again. However, the black rectangle is a bit annoying.

Therefore, another popular method is to place any emoji over the child’s face in the pre-installed photo editing apps.

Pixelate photos on the PC

There is also a free program for the PC with which you can make faces unrecognizable in a similar way. Download Paint.NET and import a photo. With the Rectangle tool you simply draw a frame around the face and then choose “Effects | Distort | Resolve to Pixels” or the “Blur and Soft Focus | Gaussian Blur”.

Finally, use the slider to adjust the strength of the effect – you shouldn’t be squeamish about it, otherwise the face will still be recognizable in the end. As with the above app, you can place a black rectangle or circle over the face in Paint.NET to be on the safe side. You can find the most important functions of the program in the practical tip at CHIP .

Delete metadata from photos

Sensitive information can be found not only in the visible part of a photo, but also in the so-called metadata. These often include the date of recording, the device used and even the location of the recording. This is where it gets tricky, because unauthorized persons could find out where you live.

You should therefore delete all metadata from the images before uploading them to Facebook and Co. The free software Photo Anonymizer will help you. Simply select all the images you want to upload and click on “Anonymize files” in the program.