Teenage girl is suing her parents for "embarrassing" baby photos of her on Facebook.

Potty photos, first steps, photos of a baby naked in her cot.

You see them everyday as you scroll through your Facebook feed. Friends’ children, neighbours’ children. Your own.

But many parents don’t stop to consider whether the baby themselves actually wants their life shared and scrutinised by her parents’ 700 closest “friends” on Facebook.

One teenager has said enough and after asking her parents to take the images down and being bluntly told no, she is taking matters into her own hands and is suing her parents for violating her privacy.

The 18-year-old from the southern Carinthia region of Austria has said in court papers that the pictures from her childhood have made her life a misery.

In a lawsuit against her mother and father she is suing her parents for infringing her right to privacy and is attempting to force them to remove the childhood pictures of her from Facebook.

The 18-year-old woman said the pictures were “embarrassing” and a “violation of her privacy.”

“They knew no shame and no limits,” she told Heute, “They didn’t care if I was sitting on the toilet or lying naked in the cot, every moment was photographed and made public.”

The woman said she had repeatedly asked her parents to remove more than 500 pictures of her from Facebook, but they had refused.

When she turned 18 she decided to take legal action.

“I’m tired of not being taken seriously by my parents,” she said.

“They didn't care if I was sitting on the toilet or lying naked in the cot, every moment was photographed and made public.” Image via iStock.

Her parents have shared the intimate pictures with around 700 friends on Facebook, she said.

Her lawyer Michael Rami says his client has a good chance of winning in court. Rami says his client will win if it can be proven the photos violated her rights to a personal life.

The girl’s father says that since he took the pictures, he has the right to publish them.

Austrian privacy laws are not as strict as some other European countries. In France, anyone convicted of publishing and distributing images of another person without their consent can face up to one year in prison and a fine of up to €45,000. ($A54,000)

This applies to parents publishing images of their children too.

Viviane Gelles, a lawyer specialising in internet-related issues told The Telegraph that under French law, “parents are responsible for protecting images of their children.”

“We often criticise teenagers for their online behaviour, but parents are no better.”

“Children at certain stages do not wish to be photographed or still less for those photos to be made public.”

A survey in the UK found the average parent will have posted 1,498 pictures of their children on social media by the time the child turns five.

More than half of these photos are posted on Facebook while the remainder are posted on Twitter, Instagram and other sites.

A quarter of parents say they never ask permission of people in photos before sharing them and nearly one-fifth of parents have never checked their privacy settings. Scarily, less than half of the parents surveyed are even aware that photos often contain data about where it was taken.

A study by University of Michigan found that children aged 10 to 17 “were really concerned” about the ways parents shared their children’s lives online.

The average parent will have posted 1,498 pics of their kids online by the time their child turns 5. Image via iStock.

Professor Nicola Whitton of Manchester Metropolitan University told The Guardian that parents need to be aware that their children may not thank them for their oversharing.

“I think we’re going to get a backlash in years to come from young people coming to realise that they’ve had their whole lives, from the day they were born, available to social media,” she said

“Parents have to work out what’s right for them, but be aware that this is another person, another human being, who may not thank them for it in 15 years to come.

“It may seem hard, but my line would be don’t put pictures online until they’re of an age where it’s appropriate to discuss it with them,” Whitton says.