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GMLS members were sent the following notification regarding online listing pictures today:

New Listing Photo Privacy Protection Now Active for GMLS

Automatic Media Privacy for Off-Market Listings in Flexmls


The Greenwich MLS has enabled a new setting in Flexmls designed to strengthen listing photo privacy and reduce risk for our members and your clients.


Effective immediately, when a listing moves to an off-market* status in Flexmls, all associated media — photos, videos, virtual tours, and floor plans — will automatically be marked private, with the exception of the primary photo. This change happens automatically; agents no longer need to manually update photo privacy status when a listing goes off-market.

*Off-market statuses include:

  • Withdrawn/Temp Off-Market

  • Pending

  • Closed

  • Cancelled

  • Expired

Photos, videos, virtual tours, and floor plans marked 'Private' remain available to GMLS Members viewing listings in Flexmls, and they can be shared with clients via PDF or web link.


This update primarily helps address ongoing concerns from members and the public around privacy, by protecting former sellers' homes from unnecessary public exposure once a listing is no longer active. It also reduces the potential risk of listing photos being repurposed in scams or otherwise being used improperly after a listing's active period ends.

What this means for you:

  • No action is required on your part — the setting applies automatically to newly entered listings going forward.

  • The setting will be applied to all historical listings over the next 8 weeks. 

  • The primary photo will remain visible.

  • The privacy is automatically updated if a Withdrawn/Temp Off-Market Listing switches to Active/Back On Market.

  • If a specific listing needs its media made public again while off-market, GMLS retains the ability to override this on a case-by-case basis. Contact us if you need this exception.

Sadly, I understand this move. Scammers have increasingly been using actual listings to defraud people: I ran into one myself, when, some years ago, I found what looked like a huge bargain rental on Craig’s List but digging into it, discovered that the so-called landlord had just lifted a real listing and was angling for a deposit that would have disappeared as quickly as he did. That sort of thing is far more common than I’d thought.

And there are concerns about privacy and safety; the Internet is forever, and interior pictures and floorplans should probably not be out there in perpetuity.

So going forward, if you want to see interior shots of listings here on FWIW, check them out when I first post them as new, or under contract (very few contracts are reported currently, simply because, in this market, most houses are going no contingency, and thus pending, almost immediately, without stopping at “under contract”).

Of course, you can also look forward to more frequent creative use of AI’s photo-generating capabilities here.