Dangers of posting your child's photos online

To share or not to share. That is a choice that every 21st century parent exposed to technology has to make in regards to images of themselves and their loved ones.

When I was starting www.afromum.com, I had to seriously think through the topic on privacy online and discuss it with my husband. We decided to make every effort not to over-share images of our children on social media or online.

This decision at times haunts me when I am writing very personal posts, and as is the norm with most mummy bloggers, most share images of their children to show “proof” of being a mother.

Online privacy is a subject that a lot of us parents and individuals have not given some serious thought to mostly due to the excitement that being able to exist and create our personalities online gives us.

According to commonsensemedia.org, sharing pictures of our children with friends and family is one of the most popular uses of social media and has become an everyday way to stay in touch with them.

However, most of us are not aware of the risks we put ourselves or our children in by posting these photos. Most of us do not know how to be safe online thus even when sharing images of ourselves or children.

This piece looks at eight dangers that we are potentially exposing ourselves and our children to by sharing their photos online.

DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS

Posting photos of your children creates a digital footprint — a kind of electronic paper trail — that forms their identities in a world they have not chosen to enter.

Social networking sites like Facebook will start carving out a profile of your child years before they join the network. By the time they do, Facebook will already know so much about them which might not be good as we will see below.

2.You may be stepping on your child’s anonymity and consent while it may not be something we think about all the time, we are essentially taking control of our child’s digital identity from the get-go.

For instance, what if those once-goofy baby photos come back to haunt your child later in their teen years?

3.Losing Control of your images: Once you post a photo online, you lose control over it. Someone could easily copy the photo, tag it, save it, or otherwise use it — and you might never know.

Have you ever read the Facebook terms and conditions or those of other social media sites? Well, somewhere in the long winding document is a clause that states that, you give up consent, copyrights and ownership of any media you share on the platform.

That means sites like Facebook can use the images you post on their platform in anyway they deem fit without seeking your consent first.

4.Data Collectors: Everything you post has information that is valuable to advertisers and data collectors; posting a photo of a child identifies you as someone who might be interested in baby products.

We make it quite easy for number crunchers to add data willingly...

5.Targeted Advertising: Data collection online more often than not leads to targeted advertising by social networks or sale of this data to third parties.

This is the business model for most, it not all, social networks. They are not exactly predators in the conventional sense, but marketers use your activity and social status on Facebook to target you with certain advertisements.

6.Digital child-napping: There is a growing crime called digital child-napping in which individuals or companies steal children’s images and use their images in advertisements or more sinister things.

According to Bustle.com, Digital child-napping is when strangers steal baby photos and repost them across the Internet. Sometimes, these virtual photo thieves will pass the snapshots off as their own.

But other times, it goes one step further. On Instagram, for example, accounts are being set up specifically to encourage others to join in on “adoption role playing,” inventing new identities for each child and inviting users to chime in.

7.You may be sharing your child’s location without knowing: GPS-enabled phones and location tracking integrated into photos by your camera or smartphone may offer up sensitive information like your child’s school address, your family’s home address, and other places you frequent.

8.You cannot take it back!: Once you have posted that picture, that’s it, there is no way to take it back. It is always out there, on a server, and even if you tighten up your privacy settings, a picture or video, once shared online, can, with a few indiscreet clicks by family or friends, become public property.

Even if you share the image then delete it, there is not telling that someone had not saved it to their computer already!

When sharing photos online, here are some recommended safety tips from knowthenet:

Check your privacy settings — not just once but regularly, to ensure that they have not changed.

Think before you upload — consider whether your picture is appropriate or whether it could cause embarrassment to your child later on. And if you are posting pictures of other children, seek permission first!

Don’t overshare — there is no need to upload every single picture you take, and in effect use social media as a family picture album.

Track the changes of all social media sites you use — rules and regulations change all the time, so it is important to keep abreast of your rights

Njeri Wangari is a poet and performer, IT specialist and arts blogger. She runs the the parenting blog, AfroMum (www.afromum.com) that publishes articles recognising, celebrating and encouraging African women in their careers and raising a family. Her collection of poetry is titled Mines and Mind Fields; My Spoken Words. Twitter: @NjeriWangari & @KenyanPoet