Why Blur Faces Before You Share
Facial-recognition systems can identify someone from a single shared photo — even in a crowd or at an angle — and services like Clearview AI have scraped billions of images to match faces across the web. Protest photos have been used to identify attendees, and children's photos have been harvested from public posts. Blurring faces before sharing is becoming a basic, privacy-respecting default. (For how facial recognition works and the full risk picture, see the Learn article on face privacy.)
Blur Faces in 4 Steps
- 1Upload your photo to PrivaFace by clicking or dragging. The AI face detection model (powered by Google MediaPipe BlazeFace) runs entirely in your browser using WebAssembly, automatically detecting all faces in the image — including partially visible faces, faces at angles, and smaller faces in the background of group photos.
- 2Review the automatically detected faces, each highlighted with a colored bounding box. You can toggle individual face detections on or off, adjust the blur intensity using the slider, select between gaussian (smooth) and pixelation (mosaic) blur styles, and manually add blur regions for any faces the AI did not detect. All changes preview in real time.
- 3Before exporting, zoom in and confirm every face is fully covered — including small faces in the background and any the detector skipped. A partially visible face can still be matched, so add manual blur regions over anything the AI missed and bump up the blur intensity on anything borderline.
- 4Download the anonymized image as a high-quality PNG or WebP. The result is generated locally in your browser and saved straight to your device — the original and the processed image never leave the tab, and closing it clears all data automatically.
Face Privacy Best Practices
When photographing events, protests, or public gatherings, consider carefully whether sharing faces without consent creates risks for the people in the photo — even if photographing them was legal. Consent for being photographed and consent for being published online are different things. For group photos, consider blurring faces of anyone who has not explicitly agreed to appear in images shared publicly online — this is especially important for children, for whom parents typically control consent. Face blurring alone is not sufficient for extreme high-stakes anonymization needs. Other identifying features — distinctive tattoos, unusual physical characteristics, unique clothing, recognizable backgrounds, or patterns in the image — can still be used to identify individuals. For genuinely sensitive cases, consult professional anonymization approaches. When sharing screenshots of video calls, online meetings, or recorded sessions, always blur the faces and names of all participants who have not specifically consented to the screenshot being shared publicly.