How to talk to your loved ones about privacy this holiday season
Give (and receive!) the gifts of agency and connection—not surveillance.
‘Tis the season for hats and mitts, cozy knits, and… snooping gifts? When it comes to seasonally-inspired surveillance, I prefer to draw the line at Elf on the Shelf and St. Nick’s naughty list—and that means discussing my privacy values with my loved ones in a way that honors their well-meaning desire to give the year’s trendiest gifts and to share the joy of the season.
If, like me, you like your holidays with more human connection and less data collection, here are some tips for broaching the privacy topic in the flurry of holiday festivities.
Make Memories, Not Posts
Confession: I’m ‘that mom’ who declines permission for people to share photos of my kids online. (To give myself some grace, I’ve come a long way from being ‘that mom’ who refuses to allow any digital photos of my kids at all.) A simple “Hey, let’s keep that photo within the family, ok?” will usually suffice, but when pressed to provide my rationale, I explain that we can’t really know the future consequences of exposing our kids to facial recognition systems and AI surveillance tools, that there’s an alarming risk of their images being used to generate child sexual abuse material or to be victimized by sextortion, that kids are being profiled by data brokers in ways that can ultimately determine their deservedness for education, healthcare, housing, employment, financing, insurance, and many other necessities of modern life, and that I’d prefer for them to be able to consent to how they’re represented online—but they’re not yet at an age to do so.
Keeping my kids’ images and other personally identifiable information offline (to the extent humanly possible) is most consistent with my parenting philosophy of stewarding their futurity by preserving the broadest range of opportunities for them to explore as they mature.
So when the cell phone cameras aim our way, I encourage making memories—not social media posts.
Trace Genealogy, Not Genes
Consumer genetic tests—think 23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage and more—are popular holiday gifts that promise to unwrap the secrets of your family tree and your personal health. But some services over-deliver on this promise, revealing genetic and personal data we’d prefer to keep under wraps. In the advice of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC),
Keep in mind that DNA is sensitive stuff. It tells a story not just about you, but also about people you’re related to…. What’s different here [from other data privacy risks] is the uniquely personal nature of the information at risk.
For example, an investigation by Consumer Reports uncovered that direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies don’t meaningfully distinguish between sharing one’s genetic data for scientific and medical research and sharing one’s data for corporate product development research. This means that the well-meaning 80% of 23andMe users who opt-in to data sharing for research may be unwittingly providing their genetic and personal health data for 23andMe to exploit for targeted ads and other business purposes. The genetic testing companies profiled all engaged in data over-collection practices that exceed what is needed to provide their products and services, in Consumer Reports’ estimation, violating the data governance best-practices of data minimization and purpose limitation.
And once you hand your genetic data off to a third-party, it takes on a life of its own—a fact that 15 million people confronted when 23andMe declared bankruptcy earlier in 2025 and sold users’ genetic data as a corporate asset to a spun-off research enterprise. Genetic testing companies are more than just sensitive data banks—they also store biological specimens, enabling future use of one’s own body scarcely imaginable today:
Whereas other data evolves and changes and may be “about” people, genetic information, in a very real sense, “is” people.
One alternative to consumer genetic testing is good ole’ fashioned genealogy research. Many libraries offer access to AncestryLibrary.com, a library edition of Ancestry.com, where public records—not personal genetics—provide the foundation for tracing your family history. Instead of gifting unintentional privacy risks, give the gift of shared experience—get the family together in-person or on Zoom for a trip to the local library and a round of genealogy research. Strengthen your family tree by discovering your roots together—without selling out your loved ones’ genetic privacy.
Smart Kids, Not Smart Toys
In one of the greatest marketing ploys in history, companies that sell products and services that spy on you describe them as “smart.” I mean, who doesn’t want to be “smart” (or—by contrast—who wants to feel “stupid”)?
This is doubly true for the gifts we give our kids. As parents and caregivers, we look for any opportunity to give our kids a leg-up in the world (sometimes before they’re even born, as revealed by the emergence of polygenic embryo screening and “picking your baby” based on predicted traits like IQ).
But surveillance capitalism theorist Shoshana Zuboff reminds us that the term “smart” is so often a euphemism for “surveillance”:
“intelligence that is designed to render some tiny corner of lived experience as behavioral data” (p. 237).
There’s no tinier corner of lived experience than your child’s own mind, and the nursery or playroom where it develops.
But smart toys are getting a whole lot smarter—and creepier!—with the integration of generative AI (hereafter ‘AI’). Now in addition to sensing, transmitting, recording, and responding to your child’s biometrics (voice, face), speech, and imaginative play, AI toys can engage in longer and more novel, open-ended transactions that mimic authentic human interaction.
In a world where even adult users develop unhealthy emotional dependence on chatbots—and in which some adolescents have been sexually groomed and coached into committing suicide—we simply don’t know the implications of introducing AI companions at the critical developmental stage of early childhood. Public Interest Research Group tested four AI toys and found three of the four exhibited persuasive design engagement tactics, such as discouraging the user from leaving or asking follow-up questions when the user indicated they were ready to stop playing with the toy. Coupled with an unprecedented degree of personalization, availability, and fawning responsiveness, child development experts express concern that the artificial intimacy of AI toys may interfere with the necessary, healthy bonds between children and their caregivers and peer friends.
Human relationships come with complexity, negotiation, uncertainty, disappointment, and even heartbreak—the kinds of friction that give them meaning. AI companions offer frictionless engagement on-demand and can both substitute, and create unrealistic expectations for, authentic human connection. In the words of one clinical psychologist,
We have almost no long-term research on what AI toys will do to a generation’s creativity, social skills, or emotional health. The reality is that we’re running a massive, real-time experiment on our kids.
PIRG also determined that the four AI toys tested were, to varying degrees, willing to divulge information on where to find dangerous household items and substances (knives, matches, bleach), and to discuss topics that are traditionally contoured by family values and culture, such as death, drugs, sex, divorce, politics, and religion. As observed in the report, these AI toys are Internet-enabled and can act as voice-activated, natural language information retrieval devices, providing unintentional access to online information for young users.
So please make a list (of privacy considerations) and check it twice before introducing any ‘smart’ (read: surveillance) devices—and particularly AI toys—into a child’s tiny corner of lived experience. In a world where you can make a new craft a week by repurposing your toilet paper rolls, who needs AI creeps lurking about?
Home Is Where the Heart—Not the ‘Smart’—Is
Even before having kids—and my Hallmark habit before them—I loved transforming my home into a winter wonderland when the days grew cold and the nights grew long.
Yuletide carols? check.
Smart fridge tipping my health insurer off to my late night sugar cookie binge? …Wait, what?!
When it comes to smart homes, “every layer of convenience adds a layer of risk.” Those risks may be as basic as a smart meter that raises the rates on electricity during peak use times, or as invasive as AI home-wreckers.
Smart home devices lay out the welcome mat for surveillance in our most intimate spaces, where our expectation of privacy is traditionally the greatest but our guard is down. The way I see it, if you wouldn’t welcome a team of random tech bros (or the fuzz) into a living space to record every single facet of your daily existence and then place bets on the outcome, you probably shouldn’t have smart devices there, either.
Sometimes there are ways to strike a balance between convenience and privacy—but there are also ways to give convenience without a side of surveillance. For example, meal-in-a-jar recipes blend food-prep convenience with folk art flair, and custom coupon books let you thoughtfully personalize services or experiences, sans tracking and targeting.
“Love Means Never Having to Say ‘I’m Sorry (I Surveilled You)’”
A plot device in one of my go-to holiday romances, Happiest Season (2020), involves characters exploiting location services to surveil each other’s whereabouts (and—spoiler alert!—seal the deal on the happy ending).
But I think the takeaway message from holiday office party flick, Desk Set (1957)—in which librarian Bunny Watson comes up against IBM’s new “mechanical brain,” EMERAC—is that the best role for technology is one that enhances, rather than diminishes, our humanity.
In that spirit, these gift guides recommend presents for the privacy enthusiasts on your list:
No- and low-tech gift ideas in the November 2025 Gift Guide from Skyward IT Services
Privacy and Security Gifts, 2024-25 from the Privacy Professor
Top Privacy Gift Ideas for Security Enthusiasts and The Ultimate Privacy Gift Guide for 2024 from WhatIsMyIPAddress.com
And—for those of you shopping off-list—Mozilla Foundation’s *Privacy Not Included guide for giving your gift ideas a privacy, data security, and AI check-up.
May your days be merry and bright, and may all your holidays be private!
Sarah Hartman-Caverly is co-moderator of HxLibraries and a privacy nerd. You can find her work on the Digital Shred Privacy Literacy Toolkit. Outside of the library, you can probably find her running the trails of southeastern PA, cooking up a one-pot family meal, or mod-podging toilet paper rolls with her young kids.
There's really not a whole lot to argue with here.