Where should you keep your child's photos?

The first and most important question. There are three levels:

• Public: anyone with the link, or anyone on the internet.
• Semi-public: friends of friends, or whatever an algorithm decides.
• Private: only the people you actively invite.

Plenty of services default to semi-public. For a child's photos, prefer somewhere private by default, where you decide each time.

Almost every service compresses to some degree, to save space and load quickly. What matters is whether they say so plainly.

Cubi, for example, compresses to a 1920px long edge and does not keep full-resolution originals — that is stated in its privacy policy. If you want the highest-quality originals (for printing, or a paper album), keep a second copy elsewhere, such as an external drive or a service that stores originals.

Phones usually write GPS coordinates into a photo file. That means a picture of your child in front of your house can carry your home address without you noticing.

Before sharing a child's photos, it is worth checking whether the service strips this. Cubi removes GPS data from the stored and shared image file, and does not use location for any feature. With other services, you can turn location tagging off in your phone's camera settings.

A decent home for photos gives you a clear way out: delete the account from inside the app, delete the photos and videos with it, and say plainly how long it takes to disappear from their systems.

If a service is vague about this, or makes you write in and wait indefinitely, treat that as a signal.

Whatever you choose, do not let the most precious photos exist in only one place. Services close, accounts get lost, phones break.

A simple habit: every few months, copy your child's most important photos to an external drive or a second backup service. Fifteen minutes of work for years of peace of mind.