We are not living in the same world we were living in just two decades ago. Back then sharing a photo on social media felt like a minor act of social connection. Putting that same image online today carries risks that did not exist in 2005. The simple act of posting an image of yourself or a loved one online today is a potential invite for the lowlife class of the human race to exploit you or those loved ones in ways you probably have not imagined.
Cybersecurity professionals now routinely advise people to stop posting identifiable photographs of themselves and their families. The advice is not paranoia. It reflects a fundamental shift in what a single clear image of a human face can enable.
Having worked in IT for 25 years, concerns like this began to occur to me a decade or so ago. I responded by deleting all images of myself, loved ones and friends from my social media accounts and I have not posted any since. The most visible danger is the rapid rise of non-consensual intimate imagery created by generative AI. Modern tools can take an ordinary social media photo and produce highly realistic nude or sexualized images and videos of the person depicted in seconds. Research consistently shows that the overwhelming majority of deepfake videos online are pornographic, and nearly all of the victims are women and girls.
In many documented cases the source material is nothing more than a public Instagram or Facebook photo. Victims report lasting psychological harm, reputational damage, harassment, and difficulty removing the material once it spreads. The technology has also been used to generate explicit images of minors from ordinary childhood photos, turning what parents once considered innocent “sharenting” into a potential source of child sexual abuse material.
Sextortion schemes have evolved alongside these capabilities. Criminal lowlife no longer need to hack an account to obtain compromising material. They can generate it, then contact the victim with threats to distribute the images among friends, family, employers, or school communities. The FBI has issued repeated warnings about hackers who target social media accounts specifically to steal private images, which are then sold on dark-web markets along with identifying details. Once personal photos are online, they become raw material for both real and synthetic extortion.
Beyond sexual exploitation, ordinary photographs supply biometric data that is effectively permanent. A face is not like a password that can be reset. Facial recognition systems and reverse-image search tools can link a single photo to other online appearances, public records, and social connections. Scammers combine facial images with voice samples scraped from videos or audio clips to create convincing deepfake video calls or voice messages. These have already been used in business email compromise schemes that cost companies millions and in personal frauds that target ordinary families. In some experiments, high-resolution selfies showing hands have even allowed researchers to reconstruct usable fingerprint patterns, raising the theoretical possibility of biometric authentication bypasses.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Nik Seetharaman, former head of Cybersecurity for SpaceX had to say in the Shawn Ryan Show in February. (Fair warning: Curse words are generously included)
Considering that AI enables virtually anyone to do almost anything with a simple online photograph, the nefarious things that your average lowlife can do with that photograph have virtually no limits. Consider this scenario — and don’t worry about this giving someone a new idea since the types of people that do these things came up with it long before I did — and believe me, it is entirely plausible:
Say, for example, someone has a teenage granddaughter that has the typical social media presence with numerous images including selfies and also videos that include the sound of her voice. It is entirely possible for someone to download those photos and videos and use AI to create a frighteningly realistic video of her to send to her grandparents. I suspect a lowlife might be more inclined to target a grandparent since older people are considered as more vulnerable to these kinds of things.
The video that the lowlife creates could be almost anything including one featuring the granddaughter crying and pleading for her grandparents to save her life from kidnappers by sending a ransom in the form of cryptocurrency to a specific address. In addition to a realistic-looking video representation of their granddaughter, her voice would sound exactly like it is their granddaughter talking.
Some potential victims of a scam light that would have the presence of mind to contact their granddaughter or her parents for verification and some would not. And what if they could not reach them right away? They would be compelled to act as quickly as possible to save their granddaughter’s life and many would send the payment without delay.
Even when photos are posted with privacy settings restricted, the risk remains. Despite promises that “your data is secure,” platforms suffer breaches regularly. Friends and relatives may reshare images without your knowledge. Data brokers and AI training sets have repeatedly absorbed publicly available and semi-private images without meaningful consent. Once a face enters these systems, control is largely lost. Deleting the original post does not remove every copy or derivative that has already been made.
Children face particular vulnerability. Photos shared by parents can later be used against the young people themselves, long after the original posts are forgotten. Schools have already seen cases in which classmates generated explicit deepfakes of peers from ordinary social media images. The psychological and social consequences for adolescents can be severe, and legal remedies remain incomplete and slow.
None of this means that every photograph posted will result in catastrophe. Most people will never become victims of a high-profile deepfake or sophisticated fraud. The risk, however, is no longer theoretical or rare. Tools that once required significant technical skill and computing power are now free or cheap, widely available, and improving rapidly. The barrier to misuse has collapsed. A single clear face photo is often sufficient.
The practical response is straightforward and increasingly recommended by cybersecurity experts: treat identifiable photographs of yourself and your family as sensitive data. Limit what is posted publicly. Prefer private sharing methods when images must be exchanged. Remove or restrict older public photos where feasible. Avoid uploading personal images to consumer AI generators for novelty filters or style transfers. Recognize that convenience and social validation carry a growing cost in the age of generative AI.
The culture of casual photo sharing developed in a different technological environment — one that feels a little more innocent than the current age of AI. That environment has changed. The images we once treated as disposable social currency now function as durable biometric identifiers and source material for synthetic media. Minimizing their presence online is one of the clearer protective steps available to individuals who wish to retain control over their likeness and reduce exposure to the expanding range of AI-enabled harms.
Don’t expect the social media companies or other online platforms to warn you about these dangers. They are too busy stacking cash to concern themselves with the wellbeing of their users. If any of them have ever warned their users about such things I am not aware of it. And if they did, expect them to be buried 12 levels deep in some “Terms and Conditions” or “Acceptable Use” documents that no one ever reads — especially kids.
I know if feels unnatural and perhaps unnecessary but taking personal photographs offline and refraining from further posting could save you a lot of worry, heartache, misery and perhaps money. Before the internet came along humans managed to carry on without posting photos online for anyone in the world to see. I think we can manage to carry on into the future the same way.
