San Francisco, Aug 22 (IANS): Photo-sharing social media platform Pinterest announced to roll out new teen safety features, which include expanded private profiles, more control over your followers, improved options for collaborating only with people you know, and the ability for parents to easily opt-in and out of a parental passcode for teens.

The features will begin rolling out this week, the company said.

With the expanded private profiles feature, users aged 16 and over will be able to opt into a private or public profile.

"Once private, you will still be able to connect with your friends and family by sending a unique profile link. Private profiles are not discoverable by others on the platform and will remain the default and only option for teens under the age of 16," Pinterest said in a blogpost on Monday.

Another teen safety feature will provide users with even more control over who gets to follow them.

For teens under the age of 16, followers will be removed so that they can decide who gets to follow them and only collaborate with people they trust.

In addition, all users will be able to review and remove followers.

Moreover, the company is enabling more ways to help users make decisions about who can and can not contact them.

Now, teens under the age of 16 will only be able to send and receive messages from mutual followers who have been accepted through a unique profile link that expires after three days or when they get five new followers with the shareable link, whichever comes first, according to the company.

Under the new updates, the company will be providing parents and caregivers the ability to easily opt-in and out of the parental passcode and update the protected settings on their teen’s account.