Dangers of kid pix on Facebook, etc.

  • Thread starter Thread starter gail
  • Start date Start date
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/28/pedophiles-find-home-social-networking-facebook/

Do you post your childrens photos on Facebook or other online photo hosting sites? What precautions do you take?
What has pedophiles using social networks to exchange (their) photos have to do with my kids?
I take no precautions other than common sense, I only let friends view my pages.

Most kids are abused by people they already know, I'm not aware of anyone using the internet to track down victims.

I think people are way too paranoid, we have become far too concerned about the issue of pedophiles and their photographing/finding images of our children IMHO
 
Fox News is the #1 reason so many people have an irrational fear of public photography these days. It's the attitude that says: Anyone photographing architecture must be a terrorist, anyone photographing strangers must be a pervert, and any photo you post of yourself or your family will be copied and re-circulated around various pervert websites.
Do you post your childrens photos on Facebook or other online photo hosting sites? What precautions do you take?
First of all, I refuse to live in the fear-based world of Fox news. Yes the world can be a harsh place, and people can do some evil things. But the job of some news organizations is to attract viewers by taking uncommon but sensational incidents and making them seem like much more common and immediate threats than they actually are.

I've been posting photos my nieces and nephews online for years, and so have their parents. I now post photos of my baby girl. There is nothing about any of these photos that would interest a pervert. True there are some sickos out there who don't require much, but despite what Fox says I doubt they are lurking around every Internet corner.

As far as Facebook goes I only share photos with friends. I can restrict my Smugmug galleries so they require a password or a direct link, but I don't bother because whenever I have tried it I have gotten e-mails from family and friends on a regular basis saying they lost the link or forgot the password. So I choose to make it easy for them.

There are a few other common sense things people can do to keep their photos from appearing in Google searches. Don't tag the kid's photos with keywords like, "girls," "boys," or "cheerleaders." Other than exercising a little common sense I would not worry about it. I've got more immediate things to worry about. So I say go ahead and share tasteful photos of your kids online. It's one of the best ways I know to share the joys in life with family and friends.

Sean
 
By the way Gail... you didn't tell us your opinion and what precautions you recommend to your readers (Digicamhelp is a great site). My comments were not directed at you. Although I may have used that pronoun out of convenience at times, I meant "you" in the general sense.
 
By the way Gail... you didn't tell us your opinion and what precautions you recommend to your readers (Digicamhelp is a great site).
Thank you for you kind words.

Actually, I haven't written about the subject but maybe it would be a good idea to do so.

I am, however, publishing an article about Facebook next week after reading that "it has become the world's largest repository of photos; its users would be loathe to abandon all those pictures, since many don't keep copies elsewhere."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/23/AR2010092304440.html?hpid=sec-tech

We who have an avid interest in photography have been aware of these types of issues for years; but many haven't the foggiest. I've never kept all my photos in one place but people I know never think about backing theirs up.

I do most of what others have already suggested. On Facebook it's Friends only. I don't tag any photos of family and friends.

The Fox news article isn't covering new news really; I read about the subject a couple of years ago. I was just interested in what others thought.
My comments were not directed at you.
I certainly didn't take it that way at all.

I appreciate everyone's comments.

--
gail ~ http://www.pbase.com/gailb

My Canon s90 BLOG: http://www.digicamhelp.com/camera-logs/canon-s90/canon-s90-first-impressions/
 
Do you post your childrens photos on Facebook or other online photo hosting sites? What precautions do you take?
gail,
Do you count Dpreview? If not, why not?

I have seen photos of your granddaughter here (I post my grandchildren here and other web-hosting sites too).

I think it is wise not to give any specific information such as address, phone numbers, etc, etc. on internet sites.

--
Don
http://www.pbase.com/dond
 
I haven't noticed that Fox News is any more paranoid than any other news organization.
Fox news may not be paranoid, but I have noticed that they give an awfully lot of air time to crime and crime reporting....crime as entertainment...more than the average news organization.

--
Don
http://www.pbase.com/dond
 
I limit all my shots on FB to friends only and then make a list of which friends I want to block that particular album from, I guess everyone has friends in their list who they don't want to share everything with. I will call the lists something like FB Private, FB Open, Just Family, Just Work.

What I have noticed is that if I join/like a Facebook group then I have to then add that group into my lists or it looks like they have access to all my albums too.

I was editing my different lists yesterday and noticed that all the groups I've joined/liked were somehow no longer in my photo album lists even though I had added them all at various points. I guess thats just a case of Facebook screwing around their settings again. These things need constant checking.
 
Gail don't take this the wrong way either, but if you follow the links in your profile to your site I can see images of your grandchildren. Further to that I could easily find your Full name town and home address.
Not hard.

My point is that publishing images of children in my opinion puts them at zero risk from abusers.
Here is a picture of my son:



Now I can't think for the life of me how this will attract or help any pedophile?

Furthermore:

The article you linked to wasn't about the risks of posting children's images on social networks, there are little or no risks involved.

What the article was about was a pedophile group using Facebook as a front for sharing existing photos and as such is a matter for police authorities, Facebook are obliged to supply full IP addresses and any law infringement will be dealt with.

I think the issue is way overblown.
 
I haven't noticed that Fox News is any more paranoid than any other news organization.
They may be telling you what you want to hear. Like someone going to a church that preaches what they believe.

--mamallama
 
... many totally ignore my advice about security relative to their accounts, behaving like the proverbial ostrich with head buried in the sand - on basis "it will not happen to me".

Facebook, as one specific example, makes settings to only permit friends/family to view are laughable. Why? Because the friends/family Facebook accounts can easily reveal (if not similarly secured) all the information the one person has thought was securely installed on their own Facebook account. A farce really.

Seemingly a great idea for sharing photos and information between distant friends and family members, in reality an open invitation for paedophiles to use as their main source of information, revealing age of kids, what they look like, usually home location and school. What more could they require - and so easily obtained too.

Many find their e-mail addresses (but unknown to them - including you perhaps?) have been used to circulate e-mails to everyone in their Contacts list as though the person was recommending some company's products - they appear to come (and indeed actually do) from the person's e-mail account. All down to one simply remedied reason. Password strength.

It is recommended to use at least 9 characters, with at least one Capital letter, numbers and some symbols (like a # for example) to make such a strong password that it would take around (quoted) ten years to crack. The normal passwords used for such accounts are generally cracked (allowing illegal use as mentioned) within 2.4 seconds (also quoted).

When did you last change your password(s) to be secure along the lines indicated?

--
Zone8

The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process. -Edward Weston
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS
 
Seemingly a great idea for sharing photos and information between distant friends and family members, in reality an open invitation for paedophiles to use as their main source of information, revealing age of kids, what they look like, usually home location and school. What more could they require - and so easily obtained too.
So lets say someone aquires this information, how does it put my children at risk?

Anymore than say them walking a dog past school at 3:30 liking the look of some child? What is the percentile risk?

Possibly if the person lives within 100 miles of my child, they could observe him/her but how does this put my child at risk?

There is zero risk really of of a paedophile finding a picture on facebook, looking for a way to find that persons school, then trying to abduct them?

How many times has that happened?

What really happens is abusers find children who are known to them, or vunerable adults (in care homes, on the streets and mentally ill) befrend them (known as grooming) and then abuse them.

There is ZERO chance of them finding a picture of a child they like on the internet, that child being close enough to observe,then them getting access, then being able to befriend the child and then abuse them-its bizzare logic.

The arguments that posting images puts children at risk is not based upon facts or logic.
 
Apparently, they are saying what most people want to hear. Their ratings continue to climb while the broadcast networks and CNN continue to decline. All news agencies are heavily biased.
 
The arguments that posting images puts children at risk is not based upon facts or logic.
Amen to that! But logic doesn't seem to come into it with parents in a lot of cases.

There was an interesting list over on boingboing a while back showing what parents worry about and what things actually hurt kids ( http://boingboing.net/2010/09/08/what-parents-worry-a.html ). The interesting thing about this list is that virtually none of the real threats to children appeared on the parent's fear lists.
 
All news agencies are heavily biased.
That's true today, but Fox was the groundbreaker treating news as entertainment and telling people what they wanted to hear. It's become the news business model with Fox on the right, MSNBC on the left and CNN nowhere. The education channel, CNBC and BBC News offers some relief.

Meanwhile, Fox continues to claims to be "fair and balanced"... what a joke.

Where are Huntley and Brinkley when we need them?

--
Don
http://www.pbase.com/dond
 
Gail don't take this the wrong way either, but if you follow the links in your profile to your site I can see images of your grandchildren. Further to that I could easily find your Full name town and home address.
Yes, I know. I posted the link to the article to get feedback from other photographers.

I didn't say that I didn't post photos of family and friends. I take some basic precautions but know full well, having lost a daughter to a habitually reckless driver right around the block from where I lived, that dangers facing young people are much closer to home than the virtual world.

--
gail ~ http://www.pbase.com/gailb

My Canon s90 BLOG: http://www.digicamhelp.com/camera-logs/canon-s90/canon-s90-first-impressions/
 
I didn't say that I didn't post photos of family and friends. I take some basic precautions but know full well, having lost a daughter to a habitually reckless driver right around the block from where I lived, that dangers facing young people are much closer to home than the virtual world.
Sure Gail, but that's the point isn't it. People are worried about imagined threats and that creates a climate of fear.

I have personally been tackled by a woman while taking images of my own children, who labled me as 'disgusting' and that I ought to be ashamed.
She wasn't placated by the fact that they were my children on a public beach.

Such a climate of distrust and fear are commonplace and that (rather than paedophillia) is much more damaging to our children growing up autonomous rounded individuals-if we teach fear then we live that way.

I understand that you are not saying that we shouldn't use images on the internet but..

You posted a link about paedophiles using social networks as a reporitory for vile images.

I then took it that you were extrapoting that to how we are using the same site for our own images to share with family.

The two are different situations, there is no risk in you putting up pictures in the virtual world. If there were those risk pale into insignifigace when measured against the real world risks.
Regards
Mark
 

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