Abstract: At least one of the embodiments described herein relate generally to a method of providing visual privacy for a message sent to at least one device. The method may include the acts of: receiving the message at the at least one device, the message including content and a privacy indicator; converting the content to a content image; applying a blur function to the content image to generate a blurred content image; generating an obscured layer from the blurred content image; partitioning the content image into one or more segments to generate a content layer, the one or more segments each having one or more segment attributes; aligning the obscured layer with the content layer, wherein selecting an area on the obscured layer corresponding to the one or more segments removes the obscured layer for the one or more segments based on the one or more segment attributes.