Tips for Safely Sharing School Event & Activity Videos

Sports days, recitals, local festivals — it’s natural to want to share event videos with family and friends, but they always capture participants other than your own child. Here are the key points for sharing safely, organized around official public guidance.

Key takeaways

• The basic rule when others appear in your photos or videos is to get permission (Japan’s Personal Information Protection Commission).
• Even with location data turned off, background buildings and signs can reveal where you filmed (Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications).
• At schools, it’s common practice to require consent from the individual and guardian before publishing personal information such as photos of faces (Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology).
• The safe approach is to mosaic faces other than your own child’s and share with limited access and an expiration date.

Why this matters

Group photos and videos inevitably capture children and guardians beyond your own family. Educational materials from Japan’s Personal Information Protection Commission urge people, before posting to social media, to “get permission when others appear” and to remember that “once you post, complete deletion is difficult” (Personal Information Protection Commission, “Posting to social media”).

This is also part of why schools and preschools often ask families to refrain from posting footage publicly. Materials from Japan’s Ministry of Education (MEXT) likewise treat consent from the individual and guardian as a prerequisite for publishing personal information such as photos of faces (MEXT, “Points to note when disclosing information,” PDF).

Risks that are easy to overlook

Turning off location data (GPS) doesn’t guarantee safety. In trouble cases documented by Japan’s communications ministry, the filming location was inferred from background buildings and signs, escalating into stalking and similar incidents (MIC, “Harm from individuals being identified through posts”). Video carries more information than a photo, so be aware that a person can also be identified from voices or someone calling out a name.

On the topic of posting children’s photos to social media, one private survey (of 171 guardians of preschool-age children) reported that over 90% take some kind of privacy precaution, and the most common one was “restricting who can view the post” (survey by Uluru Inc., 2024; PR TIMES). It’s a small private survey, but it points to a cautious mindset among parents.

Pre-sharing checklist

Drawing on official public guidance, the pre-sharing check comes down to these four points.

1. Turn off location data and confirm the post doesn’t include your location.
2. Check the background for anything that pinpoints a location — your home, a school name, a sign.
3. Check whether faces other than your own child’s are identifiable. If they are, get consent or hide them with a mosaic.
4. Narrow who can see it. Share via a limited-access link with an expiration date.

Hide faces and share safely

Hiding faces by hand in a crowded event video is a lot of work. With Mosaic Post, just pick the file and it automatically mosaics the faces of everyone in the video.

• Choose your concealment style: mosaic, blur, or solid fill
• An ellipse that follows the shape of the face, with smooth edges
• Every detected face is listed, so you can choose which ones to leave visible (keep your own child, for instance)
• Your video is never transmitted — the processing runs entirely inside the browser
• Free for videos up to 3 minutes, no sign-up

Share the processed video on a private cloud or in a family group, and you’re far more secure.

For use-case details, see Children’s faces in school event and activity videos; for the basics of hiding faces, see How to blur faces in video; and for the thinking around portrait rights, see How to hide other people’s faces.

Sources

• Personal Information Protection Commission (Japan), "Watch out! Personal information — 'Posting to social media'" — ppc.go.jp
• Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Japan), "Things to watch out for when posting on social media (harm from individuals being identified through posts)" — soumu.go.jp
• Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Japan), "Points to note when disclosing information" (PDF) — mext.go.jp
• (Reference, private survey) Uluru Inc., "Survey of guardians' attitudes toward posting children's photos on social media" (2024, n=171) — prtimes.jp

Blur faces in your browser → (no upload, free)