Urgent warning issued to parents who cover their children’s faces with emojis in photos

"This approach is more security theatre than actual security."

This growing trend has captivated celebrities and everyday families alike, even Meghan Markle and Orlando Bloom have taken this popular precaution to protect the identities of their children online.

Where some content creators are comfortable sharing pictures of their children on their social media, other parents choose not to and are a little more careful on the internet, ensuring the faces of their children cannot be seen, often covering them with a large emoji.

However, it appears not be the safe precaution parents worldwide believe it to be, as in reality it could be doing very little to actually shield them from online exposure.

A cybersecurity specialist explained exactly why it might not be the best idea to use an emoji to cover your child's face.

“I need to be brutally honest here: putting an emoji over a child’s face provides virtually no real privacy protection whatsoever,” explains Lisa Ventura, an award-winning cybersecurity specialist and founder of Cyber Security Unity, to The Independent.

“This approach is more security theatre than actual security.”

It's important to be aware that the more you share online, the more likely a prospective hacker might gather personal information about you.

Ventura continued: “Most parents aren’t just posting one carefully emoji-protected photo.

“They’re sharing multiple images over time, and the combined data from all those posts creates a much bigger privacy concern than any single image.

“Every photo you upload trains facial recognition algorithms and builds advertising profiles."

Even when you’re carefully choosing the perfect emoji to match a photo you want to share with your followers, that image still includes identifiable details, such as the background, clothing, or shoes. Over time, these details can be pieced together to build a profile of your child.

And even more alarming, with artificial intelligence becoming more advanced, tools can now remove emojis or stickers that cover faces or parts of a photo. This means the safety tools you think you’re using to protect your child can quickly become redundant.

“If you wouldn’t hand a physical copy of that photo to a complete stranger in the street, don’t post it online,” Ventura advises.

“Because that’s essentially what you’re doing, except that stranger might be able to keep it forever, or worse, use it in unauthorised ways you did not intend.”

Therefore, the safest option if you want to protect your children’s identities is simply not sharing any pictures of them online.