What if you tagged an embarrassing photo of me, shared it with a circle of hundreds of co-workers (that you excluded me from), and then not only do I not know t

What if you tagged an embarrassing photo of me, shared it with a circle of hundreds of co-workers (that you excluded me from), and then not only do I not know the picture is out there, but co-workers can see it by visiting my profile and looking at pictures tagged of me? Let's break this down and relate it to physical (they're both real) photos: What if you tagged an embarrassing photo of me Considering only viewing the page for the photo at this point: With physical photos it's possible to write someone's name on them, and online it's always possible to add a description identifying who is in a photo, so being able to tag anyone doesn't increase the information storage of the system. shared it with a circle of hundreds of co-workers (that you excluded me from) People can show physical photos of you to other people without you knowing. They can send or grant access to digital photos without you knowing. Being able to grant access to photos of you on a social network is just an extension of this. Granting access so that people can see the photos when viewing an album or see an album in an album list is (or could be) separate from where or how that permission to view the photo is made known. and then not only do I not know the picture is out there We don't know that about physical photos, or photos that are sent in emails. but co-workers can see it by visiting my profile and looking at pictures tagged of me? Now this would be problem. There shouldn't be anything viewable on your profile by other people that you can't see yourself. Photo's should only be able to be shared and sent in private by explicitly sending a message to a group of people. I don't think that scenario is possible with G+ at the moment. Tagging someone in a photo automatically gives that person access to the photo. What G+ currently lacks is a way to tag someone without giving that person access to the photo. That's not perfect but it's better than the alternative which you described. Hopefully they'll find a way of making it possible to tag someone in private without putting it in front of people in ways that it's not possible in the physical world. You can't pin embarrassing photos on people without them noticing.