The mother of a 10th grade student alerts the school that her daughter’s estranged, abusive father is moving to the area. She requests all pictures of her daughter be removed from district-related web pages to protect her identity and location. She is especially worried about pictures from when her daughter was younger, as they would be more recognizable to the father. She doesn’t want him to be able to locate her family or risk him showing up to school events.
Four years ago, a staff member posted a photo to the district Instagram page. The photo shows the back of Diego, a first-grader, holding his mom’s hand as they walk into his school for an event.
This week, Adam, a 5th grader, finds the picture and sends it to a group chat with Diego and other students in their grade. He adds the caption “Mama’s boy”. While his face is not visible in the photo, Diego is clearly recognizable to people who know him. In retaliation, Diego takes a picture of Adam from behind as he walks home holding his little sister’s hand and sends it back to the group chat. This back-and-forth escalates until it requires school-based intervention.
Jordan, a class of 2023 alum, wants to cull his digital footprint before he sends out internship applications. He comes across a silly track team photo posted on the team’s Instagram account. Jordan’s career counselor suggests the photo may make it harder for Jordan to present himself as a professional and advises him to take it down. Jordan contacts the high school and asks for it to be removed.
During a visit to an elementary school, a district staff member is impressed with a display celebrating the school community. They post a picture of the display to the district Instagram account, inadvertently sharing a legible list of the names of almost every student in the building. One of the names is “Zaya A.”, a third grader whose family has a restraining order against a relative in the aftermath of a custody battle. While the list only includes each student’s first name and last initial, Zaya is a fairly uncommon name. Given the age and general location, the relative deduces that this is probably the Zaya they are looking for and shows up at the school during dismissal.
Erin, a middle school student, goes viral in a video on Tik Tok. The comment section quickly turns negative. One commenter takes a screenshot of Erin’s face in the video and uploads it to FaceOnLive, which gives the commenter a list of web pages that contain other images of Erin’s face. The list includes the homepage of Erin’s school, which has a photo of her in the cast of the spring musical. The commenter posts the name, website, and phone number of Erin’s school. Soon, other commenters use this information to swat Erin by calling and emailing the school with threats of violence pretending to be her.
One of our schools gets negative news coverage due to public outrage over a recent decision. An online influencer with a large following publishes a rant against the school. An enraged viewer goes to the school’s website and finds a staff list that includes a photo of each staff member. They use FaceCheck.ID’s API to automatically and efficiently search for each staff member’s face, publishing a directory of staff names, images, and links to webpages where the staff member’s face was found. Other viewers comb through the resulting social media profiles, local news articles, and other images of the staff members and start showing up to intimidate and question them at locations they frequent like coffee shops, yoga classes, and places of worship.