Pinterest

Is Pinterest safe?

For adults, mostly yes. Pinterest is a place to save recipes, outfits and home ideas, with less unwanted contact than most social apps. Its account security is sound, and no privacy regulator has fined it as far as we could find. We score it 55/100, close to YouTube (54) and well above Instagram (40).

The two problems are tracking and teenagers. Pinterest is an advertising business, and it tracks you on and off the app to target ads. And its recommendation engine has twice been shown to push harmful material to young users, once in a UK inquest and once in a US news investigation. Pinterest has since tightened its teen settings considerably.

The Molly Russell inquest

Molly Russell was 14 when she died in November 2017. In October 2022 the senior coroner for North London, Andrew Walker, concluded that she "died from an act of self-harm whilst suffering from depression and the negative effects of on-line content". His report found that the platforms she used worked "in such a way using algorithms as to result, in some circumstances, of binge periods of images, video clips and text", some of it shown without her asking, and that some content romanticised self-harm.

The coroner sent a prevention of future deaths report to Pinterest, Meta, Snap, Twitter and the UK government. In its reply of 8 December 2022, Pinterest committed to five actions by the end of 2023, including:

• limiting the spread of depressive content to teens, for example by not showing "more like this" prompts after a possibly depressive Pin;
• removing references to self-harm or suicide in artwork, memes and jokes, rather than just showing them less;
• independent testing of its moderation of self-harm content.

We could not find a public, independent check of how well those commitments were met.

The 2023 NBC News investigation

In March 2023 NBC News reported that Pinterest's algorithm was curating images of young girls for adult men who went looking for them, and that men were building "sex-themed" boards from children's ordinary photos. One nine-year-old's inbox held sexual comments from accounts that appeared to belong to men. Pinterest responded by adding reporting options, including the ability to flag content that may involve a minor, and said it would add age-verification measures later.

The teen protections that followed are now among the stricter ones on a major platform. According to Pinterest's newsroom, last updated in April 2025:

• Accounts of 13 to 15-year-olds are private and cannot be made public.
• Accounts of 16 and 17-year-olds are private by default worldwide, with the option to change it.
• Under-16s can message only mutual followers who joined through a unique profile link, which expires after three days or five new followers.
• Parents can set a passcode that stops teens changing certain settings.

These protections depend on teens entering their real age, and NBC found many young users had not.

What Pinterest tracks

Apple's privacy label lists purchases, location, name, email and identifiers as used to track you across other companies' apps and websites. Linked to your identity are 13 categories, including precise location, photos and videos, search and browsing history and a "body" category. Pinterest's privacy policy says advertisers and partners also send it data about what you do on their own sites, and that it trains machine-learning models on Pins, including its body-type search technology and generative AI features.

In October 2024 the privacy group noyb filed a complaint with France's CNIL. It says Pinterest switches on ad personalisation by default and relies on "legitimate interest" rather than asking for consent, an argument noyb says the EU's top court has already rejected for this kind of tracking. No decision had been published by the time of writing.

How to use Pinterest more safely

1. Turn on two-factor authenticationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary in your security settings and store the backup code.
2. In privacy and data settings, switch off ad personalisation, including ads based on your activity on other websites.
3. Use secret boards for anything personal, especially photos of your children.
4. For a teenager, check the age on the account is correct, keep the profile private and set a parental passcode.
5. If your feed starts showing self-harm or eating-disorder content, tap to hide it and tell Pinterest it is not relevant; for a teen, this is a signal to talk.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (80) and security (65) are Pinterest's stronger factors: no fines found and two-factorTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary login available. Privacy (33) is the weakest, because tracking for ads is extensive and on by default. Content safety (55) reflects the coroner's report and the NBC findings, balanced against much stricter teen settings since 2023. TikTok and Instagram score lower on the same factor.