A Social Media Expert Just Revealed Exactly What You Should Never Post While Traveling
Summer travel posts surge across Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook every year, just as privacy experts and police departments repeat the same warning about sharing too much online. This week, social media expert Rachel Karten publicly laid out the types of travel content people should avoid posting in real time, narrowing the focus to location-heavy updates that can expose when a home is empty.
The event
Karten, a Los Angeles-based social media consultant and author of the Link in Bio newsletter, said in recent travel-safety guidance shared in late June 2025 that travelers should avoid posting live location updates, boarding passes, passport details, and photos that reveal a home address. Her advice centered on timing, with the clearest point being that vacation content is safer to share after returning home.
The warning tracks with older guidance from U.S. agencies and airport security experts. The Transportation Security Administration has for years warned travelers not to share boarding passes online because barcodes can contain scannable personal data, and identity-theft experts have repeated that point in media interviews dating back more than a decade.
Karten’s comments did not come with a new government alert or a company policy change. What changed is the renewed attention to a familiar travel issue during the 2025 summer vacation season, when millions of Americans are posting beach, airport, and hotel updates in real time.
The local impact
For travelers in states with heavy summer tourism, including Florida, California, and New York, the practical takeaway is simple and confirmed: a public post can reveal that someone is away from home at a specific time. Police departments in multiple U.S. cities, including departments in Florida and Texas, have issued similar reminders in past summer crime-prevention campaigns.
What is not known is how many burglaries in any one state can be directly tied to vacation posts on Instagram or Facebook. Law enforcement agencies do not maintain a single national database that breaks out home break-ins by social media trigger, and major platforms have not released state-by-state figures on travel-related privacy misuse.
That leaves travelers with a risk pattern rather than a precise count. Experts have consistently said the highest-risk posts are real-time check-ins, photos showing house numbers, and images of travel documents, especially when accounts are fully public.
Why it matters for travelers
The reason this advice keeps resurfacing is that one post can disclose several pieces of usable information at once, according to privacy researchers and law enforcement guidance. A beach selfie tagged in Miami on July 2, for example, can confirm both a person’s location and that they are not at their primary residence, while a boarding pass photo can expose booking codes or frequent-flyer details.
Cybersecurity experts have also warned that scammers use publicly shared travel details for phishing and impersonation. The Federal Trade Commission has repeatedly advised consumers to limit the personal information they share online, and the agency’s identity-theft guidance has long stressed that small details can be combined into larger fraud attempts.
For travelers, the current guidance does not mean avoiding vacation photos altogether. It means delaying public posts until after a trip, checking whether geotags are on, and keeping travel documents and home identifiers out of frame, which matches the advice privacy and security experts have continued to give through the 2025 travel season.
