Say cheese, Toronto ladies — you could be caught on camera.

A new Instagram account featuring photos of “beautiful women” riding the TTC is raising questions about privacy and consent, but its creator says there’s nothing offensive about the snaps.

The account, @TTCWomen, launched earlier this month and has 200 followers and counting. It features a few women smiling at the camera, while others are staring off into space or engaged in conversations on the subway.

Some of the women who’ve stumbled across the photos aren’t impressed, labelling the photos “creepy,” “disgusting,” and “violating the privacy of every woman in the city.”

Toronto-based social and online media consultant Elena Langlois says it’s clear that, in some of the photos, the women aren’t aware they’re on camera.

“Just because I’m standing in public as a private person doesn’t give someone the right to take a photo of me and share it on social media,” she says.

Jessica Lynch, 20, takes the TTC at least twice a day and says she was “shocked” when she first saw the @TTCWomen account.

“It was absolutely enraging and sickening. . . . No way in hell would I want someone taking my picture,” she says.

“These are real people, not celebrities. This is really creepy,” she says.

Photos with names and stories would be understandable, she says, but not ones taken without permission.

Street photography is popular, notes Jenna Jacobson, a social media researcher at the University of Toronto, and people are sharing their lives online in unprecedented ways. But there are limits, she adds.

“When you are including other people, you always need to consider their rights and their privacy, and that all comes down to consent,” Jacobson says.

So who’s behind the account that’s raising so many eyebrows?

Anis Litim, a 31-year-old graphic designer who moved here from Paris three years ago, says he made the account about 10 days ago.

The idea came up while he was out with friends, and was inspired by @HotDudesReading — a popular account with almost 530,000 followers, featuring, quite literally, “hot dudes” reading books.

“It really started as a joke while we were having drinks,” Litim explains.

He’s been surprised by the media attention — the account was featured in a television story recently — and says he doesn’t see anything offensive in the photos.

“But I totally understand that there might be some concerns,” he adds. “I don’t want to get to the point where people start getting offended. From now on, I want to make sure every single person is consenting.”

Litim says he’d also like to post the names and Instagram handles of women who consent to having their photos taken so they can be part of the conversation.

As for the TTC’s stance on this type of photography, it’s largely beyond its control.

“We can’t prohibit photography on the system, but we ask our riders to respect the privacy of their fellow riders,” says TTC spokesperson Nicole Ghanie. Anyone feeling harassed can speak to a uniformed TTC representative, she adds, and in more urgent cases, use the emergency alarm system.

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Some viewers of the @TTCWomen account have also raised concerns that certain photos appear to be sourced from other websites without permission, showing women and transit systems that aren’t from Toronto.

Litim says some of the photos were indeed found through Google searches, while others are photos of his friends, because he wanted the account to look “legit” to get the ball rolling. He’s considering deleting some of the account’s original photos, he says.

But he definitely wants to keep it going, and eventually make it grow in the vein of popular street photography, like Humans of New York — but specifically for women riding the rocket.

“I’m even surprised that it didn’t exist yet,” he says.