Cruise Passenger Mortified After Realizing What She Submitted as Her Photo

A woman was left red-faced when she realized she had accidentally sent a nude photograph to a cruise liner ahead of her vacation.
Kate Goodwin, 30, a human resources worker living in London, was preparing for a well-deserved break on a Virgin Voyages cruise recently when she got an unnerving notification: “Your security photo contains nudity.”
Goodwin had submitted a photo of herself to use as ID on board the ship, but she was sure she would never have sent anything risqué—until it all suddenly came flooding back to her. The photo she had submitted required her face to be within an oval shape, with a box centering her head and shoulders within the snap, and she had assumed the photo would crop itself.
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She took the required selfie after just getting out of the shower, unaware that whoever was checking the snap would see everything—not just her head and shoulders.
“I thought it was being used as AI to verify me against my passport photo—not for human viewing or other use on the ship,” Goodwin told Newsweek. “I was naked because I had just showered and laying around on my phone as you do—but didn’t think it mattered because that part of the photo was not inside the guideline frame and only my face was.”
The moment she realized her mistake has now led Goodwin to go viral on TikTok, as she shared the story to her account @katesdaysss on September 12.
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Boasting over 77,000 views, Goodwin explained she got an email warning her that her security photo “contains nudity,” asking: “Can you imagine my shock when I see this?”
Showing an example photo of herself — fully clothed — within the circle and square, she went on: “The fact that the email has come weeks later means it’s not been picked up by AI,” but rather an actual human who had seen her naked.
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TikTok users were in fits of laughter, and Goodwin learned she wasn’t alone in her mistake, as one user wrote: “I DID THIS FOR A PHOTO FOR A NEW JOB. She emailed saying I need to be clothed for the photo and to do it again!”
“My friend does approval photos and gets them so much,” another said, and one wrote: “I feel like you’re not the first person I’ve seen this happen to,” with Goodwin replying: “It brings me comfort that I’m not alone.”
Goodwin told Newsweek she shared the clip to TikTok as she and her friends “thought it was hilarious as much as it was embarrassing,” and she wanted to “give people a laugh and make people aware not to do the same thing for any of those types of photos in the future.”
“To see how many others had done the same made me feel better, especially as some were much worse,” she said, pointing out the user who had accidentally sent a topless photo to their new job.
In Goodwin’s case, she got the photo fixed quickly, and once she arrived on the cruise ship, she quickly realized the photo ID was used a lot, as it shows up “every time you scan your wristband to make a payment or leave [or] enter the boat.”
Virgin Voyages is a subsidiary of the Virgin Group. It was founded in 2014, and offers over 100 destinations aboard four ships.
“The trip is amazing, and luckily the staff are all friendly with a good sense of humor,” she said, as she regaled some of the workers with her accidental nudity story.
“They think it’s funny, too!”
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