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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Daughter now aged five, and I've posted no photos of her online that are discoverable. There was a blog for her first six months to keep family informed of her progress, but she wasn't named on it, and it wasn't linked to from anywhere (so escaped search engines).

When it comes to other people sharing about you online (eg, parents about children), less is more.

This low profile approach nearly backfired when a photographer from a Northern Ireland paper took a shot of her on my shoulders at an anti-racism rally in Belfast and the paper ran the image prominently a handful of times over six months. But since it was taken from across the crowd, he didn't stop to get her name, so although people recognised her, it's still not linked to her name.

I'm confident that by the time she's 15 (maybe 12) she'll choose to plaster her image over the internet like every other teen, but that'll be her (informed) choice and she'll not have to deal with a backlog of embarrassing shots as she grew up.

... Good point, I forsee huge identity theft when today's children become adults. I would bet that this baby's full date of birth is on Facebook (or can easily be implied from the initial posts), not perhaps a problem now, but on his 18th birthday when he can apply for a credit card - bam!

I expect that now there are forward-looking criminals looking for anyone under 18 who is posting enough information online to identify them and give them an 18th birthday present they don't want. Being friends with your own mother is dangerous (or living at the same address !!) as it makes both birth date and mother's maiden name a doddle to gather - just scrape Facebook, 192.com and friendsreunited and you're done!

The end of privacy has arrived.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Frankly as slightly endearing, extremely sappy and somewhat disturbing as giving your baby a facebook/twitter profile is, what on earth is the poor kid goig to think when he gets to 11/12. Just when he is trying to grow up, there are baby photos all over the net. I may be overstating the case somewhat, but I agree completely with the previous posters, alaninbelfast and nhawthorn. It is at best irresponsible, shortsighted and a bit condescending, at worst, criminally stupid.

Wow, wait for this one to get into the courts.
I can see it now: A class action suit has been lodged by over 1,000,000 individuals who claim that their lives have been exposed on various social networks, including FaceBook. Some of the palintiffs state that they have been exposed since birth; some say this occured even before birth.
The exposure often contimued through to the age of twelve, or as in rather unusual case - age 51 (when his mother died).
Of course no permission was granted to the parents or guardians. The parents and guardians assumed the exposure was appropriate.
Sadly, this was not so.
At least half of the exposed minors have surfaced on pornographic sites, and thousands have been exploited in commercialized activity, like advertisements - without consent or remuneration.
At least 50 children have been kidnapped, though 23 were recovered after ransom, and 20 without ransom. The fate of the other 7 remains in doubt, the names of these seven might well be added to the class action suit.
One parent, weeping, declared: "I just wanted to share pictures of my child; I just wanted to share his growing steps..."
One parent tried to blame the child: "He's 18 months old!" she declared. "He has 132 friends and is frequently online, posting photos of himself and telling about his favorite toys and his sleepovers..." The class-action lawyer sent an investigator to this child's home to monitor the 18-month-old inputting to his FaceBook account. It was found that this 18-month year old could not type and did not know the alphabet.
The main grievance of the plaintiffs appears to be the complete, often nude (e.g. bath-time) exposure, of their entire lives online.
Revelations are also coming to light re parents and guardians. e.g. One parent had claimed seven (7) children on his tax submission; the Revenue Department got suspicious when only 1 child appeared on FaceBook. An investigation revealed that the correct number of children in this case was exactly one.
Please stay posted to this site for more information as the case progresses..."

Best keep them off the nets suspect social networking sites until at least 12. Before then be sure to have the parental controls at ultimate!!

Choose any lesser defence at your peril. We can sadly look forward to more cyber bullying and unsavioury characters pretending to be who they are not.

Best get real now and dont embarrass them!!

You're uncomfortable with creating a Facebook profile for a child without its consent, yet as a parent you were clearly comfortable with creating a child without its consent. Which is of more consequence - the Facebook profile or the child's life?

I'd suggest, respectfully, that your concern needs to be put in perspective with your own actions as a parent.

I've been chatting about my kids online since I first gave birth in 1994 - and in all the parenting forums we refer to our children as 'DS' (Dear Son) or 'DD' (Dear Daughter) - not their actual name, so I have carried this habit over to facebook, where I have my photos set to 'friends only' anyway. I do think that other folks give away too much information about members of their family though, and don't really think of the consequences.

Facebook terms of use document (retr 2010-10-07)

4.1 You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.

4.5 You will not use Facebook if you are under 13.

So regardless of how moral creating a profile for your child is, it's completely against Facebook's terms of service.

folks give away too much information about members of their family though, and don't really think of the consequences

What consequences are those, exactly? There's a lot of paranoia bandied around as if it's somehow obvious that having photos etc. of children online is dangerous, and it's not. Be specific - what are the 'consequences' you're concerned about, and how does posting to Facebook (or elsewhere) make them more likely to come about?

4.1 - no false information?

I think I should delete my current Facebook status, which says I'm currently doing my homework!

I don't think that my children are identifiable from pre-natal photos (not that I'd post them anyway.)

I'm far more concerned at the picture that a "friend of a friend" posted of my 5 year old at the mutual-friend's son's birthday party... including a caption identifying my son by name.

_Ewan_, the consequences I'm worried about is the ability of "someone" to discover my child's name, and school, and hang around the playground fence at break and lunch time calling him over by name.

Unfortunately, the (teenage) niece of a friend of mine WAS snatched by someone opposite the school gate one morning about 2 years ago - and driven around for an hour before being released, terrified.

13. At 7:06pm on 07 Oct 2010, Mark Harrison wrote:
Unfortunately, the (teenage) niece of a friend of mine WAS snatched by someone opposite the school gate one morning about 2 years ago - and driven around for an hour before being released, terrified.
------------------------------------------

This is obviously worrying, but in relation to what is being discussed here:
Was there any internet reason for the snatching?

At the risk of courting trouble I find myself wondering quite why so many people want to post *anything* on a "social networking" site. Why has everyone become so narcissitic as to believe that the minutiae of their lives are of any significant interest?
If you want to show your friends pictures of your children send them an email.
I welcome someone trying to enlighten me as to how the world in general or anyone's life in particular is meaningfully enhanced by using sites like the one featured.
For the avoidance of doubt Victor Meldrew is my role model, but that doesn't mean that I don't genuinely hold the view above.

But what happens if the baby, now a fully fledge teenager, finds his old baby Facebook and sees that he now has LESS friends? That's bound to cause some problems!

Give me a break! This increasing paranoia is driving me nuts! You may as well stop taking any photos or videos of your children. That should satisfy your paranoia.

Some of the parents who are making a huge fuss about their friends posting unnamed pics of their children, are the very people who'd jump at any opportunity to have their named children's pics published in newspapers and on TV!

I doubt very much that the potential for future embarrassment is a good enough reason not to post pics of your children (securely) on social networks, nor is the reason of identity theft. In my view it's about fears that the pics will land in the hands of paedophiles. While I don't deny there are such evil people out there, the paranoia has gone way too far. We're now living a life of constant suspicion of our friends, relatives, neighbours, and anyone who passes close to our children. We ought to free ourselves from these shackles of suspicion and reclaim our lives!

I had my first child this year and her scan pictures were on my Facebook profile as are photo updates that I post from my mobile when we're out and about. Her birth was announced on Facebook within hours. She also has a homepage. My Facebook profile is completely private and only my friends can see my photos. I don't play any games so my friends on Facebook are only real life friends. Having lived in several countries and having family in several countries I find that my Facebook page and my baby's homepage excellent ways of keeping people up to date with her progress, but with restricted access so that only people I want to see the photos get to see them.

Parents hold the control over their childrens 'image' until they are of age. So anything they do is totally legal.
But also remember that as long as I am not making money from a photo of someone I myself could legally take a photo of your child in the street and put it up on Facebook. Maybe I have. Maybe your son or daughter and wife are on a punt in Cambridge or climbing the lions in Trafalger Square.
I can take their photo. Nothing illegal about that atall despite what people think.

There is a degree of hysteria in this. Proper use of your facebook accounts will limit your photos to whoever you choose.

Also, though not having children, I have lots of albums of other people I know, (which may occasionally, depending on the event, include their offspring), on my facebook albums, (some of them facebook tagged), that I've never asked permission to display. Only once was I politely asked to remove one and that was from a 28 year old friend who was frightened that his parents might find out that he smokes!

Parents who try to hide their children from EVERY photo opportunity in every situation I think need a reality check. I appreciate hiding their personal details but trying to withhold their image is just a little bit odd and in the long term might develop some degree of paranoia in the child. They do know the camera cant capture the soul dont they?

As for self confessed Victor Meldrew 'RadioWonks' comments above I suspect he doesnt really understand what a Social Network is.

To me there is nothing more narcissistic than forcing your photographs or opinions on somone in the form of a personal email. It implies you HAVE to look at or read it, and you HAVE to comment.

The beauty of social networks is that you can keep a link with friends and family near and far, get an idea of what they are doing, and you can pick and choose what aspects of their life that they want to share that you want to be interested in.

It's the opposite of narcissim, it's completely egalitarian as a form of social interaction.

i.e. ... These are my photos, this is what I've been doing, this is what I think ... if you want to comment fine, if not, thats cool too!

If social networks arnt your cup of tea, then fine, dont use them, but dont assume it makes you superior, no more than people who claim to not watch television in favour of reading arnt in reality more intelligent, they're just limiting their sources of information!

I`m probably a bit draconian by most peoples standards when it comes to children & Social networking sites. I wouldn`t dream of allowing my daughters, or indeed pictures of them, anywhere near the places until they`re at least 13. My oldest daughter only got access on her 15th birthday in fact although i have relaxed that stance as far as the next in line are concerned.

Really young children do not need to be on Social Networking sites in any way, shape or form if you ask me. Sadly many of the parents i do PC work for spend much of their time on FB and indeed they dont care two hoots if their children are doing the same. Some of the suggestive pictures i see posted by young girls are just ridiculous and their parents need a good hard kick in the pants for not even realizing what their children are doing online.
Sadly when the parents themselves dont realize, or care, it`s already a losing battle trying to teach them otherwise.

Here's a blog article about people who take photographs on the streets, publish them, and make money off it.

/blogs/photoblog/2010/10/street_photography_now.html

It's illegal in France, without the permission of the subject, but perfectly legal in the UK even though it appears many street photographers are in retreat because of an increasingly paranoid and hysterical public. It's because of street photographers that we have some great shots of everyday public life, and even the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s "Day in Pictures" which I am a fan of as a photo enthusiast.

I've noticed this trend on social networking sites, too, and I find it disgusting. I for one have uploaded no photos of myself online. None. Not on a private Facebook profile, not on Twitter, nowhere. In fact, I hate photos being taken of me period, let alone them being uploaded onto the internet.

However, my school took photos of everyone for the year book and then proceeded to upload all those photos to their Facebook group without telling anyone. They're now publically viewable to anyone, and I've gotten nowhere getting them to remove mine. In fact, as I no longer have a Facebook account at all, I wouldn't have even known about this if I wasen't sitting next to a friend while he was checking his wall.

Personal data, whether it be photographs or your full name, should only be shared with consent. There are laws to back this - laws now being weakened due to the general public's lack of concern for their own privacy and that of their friends and family.

Still, I Googled my name yesterday and found no results which had anything to do with me. Just how I like it.

@MacBookPro
Do you walk around the place with a bag over your head so other people cannot see what you look like? I'd guess you would considering how silly you are being about one photo of you being on Facebook.

People can easily find out who are you in many different ways. Do you make sure every conversation you have is in a soundproof room so no one else can hear what your name is?

God, the paranoia and idioicy on here is amazing.

@WelshBluebird1 - surely you understand the difference between the sound of a voice and perminately and publically stored computer data?

The essensial difference is that computer data is logged and stored and, in the case of social networking sites, viewable to anyone who cares to look if you don't change your privacy settings - something many many people neglect to do.

The other difference is I wouldn't stand in the street and tell everyone my full name, date of birth, e-mail address, etc, whereas with Facebook this is what you are essensially doing.

For most people I know, one search online can tell me pretty much everything I'd need to commit identity theft or stalk them. That is something you should be rightfully worried about.

There's a reason why most social networking sites have a lower age limit on individuals creating new profiles. Last time I checked, it was 13. It seems a bit out-of-kilter for FB to then allow apps such as "BabyBook" or similar...

@MacBookPro
I'm more making reference to you complaining about your school uploading ONE picture of you. I really don't see why you have any reason to be upset by that. Anyone can see what you look like by walking past you. And my reference to you talking was if you were worried by people knowing your name.

If anything, the indexing of forums and discussions like this one is more dangerous than social networking IMO. At least with social networks you have the choice of what you share. As long as you are careful about who you are friends with, what you share, and who you share it with, then its fine IMO. Theres no need for all this paranoia.

@WelshBluebird1 - if someone were to see me walking on the street, they would know nothing about me. If they were to see my picture on the school's Facebook group, bam, they now know what school I attend. A quick Google search reveals exactly where the school is. How easy would it be for anyone, with that information, to kidnap me, stalk me, etc? Very.

Not to mention that everyone with a Facebook account at the school was tagged in those photos, so clicking theirs would then take them to their profiles. Profiles with their full names, date of birth, etc.

Again, the information all links up and is stored and presented in a way which makes it very easy to abuse.

As for my name - someone just hearing my name or saying it does not matter. But something written about me online can be indexed and searched, and is very hard to get rid of unless I'm willing to take anyone saying libelous things about me online to court.

After all, it's becoming increasingly common for employers to search job applicants' names on social networking sites to see if they can find any reason not to hire them. If someone decides to say bad things about me and it's all linked to my profile containing my full name and a picture, my issue with that should be obvious.

Forums are fine because they don't require you to join with your full name, picture, or indeed anything more personally revealing than an e-mail address which isn't displayed on the site anyway.

I remember when our girls Secondary School first started using the Internet to publish/distribute their photos. The School at least had the decency to send letters home informing us of this new approach and indeed giving us an option to opt out of the pictures being uploaded.

MacBookPro: if someone were to see me walking on the street, they would know nothing about me.

Wrong. They would know where you shop, they would know where you worked/went to school, even where you live. If they followed you of course. Easiest thing in the world to do. And you can't stop them.


-A quick Google search reveals exactly where the school is. How easy would it be for anyone, with that information, to kidnap me, stalk me, etc? Very.-

Just as it would be if I followed you.
Probably easier as I'd also know how strong you look, what you sound like etc, different clothes you wear, when you are on your own, when you are with friends.


-Not to mention that everyone with a Facebook account at the school was tagged in those photos, so clicking theirs would then take them to their profiles. Profiles with their full names, date of birth, etc.-

Only if they are idiots. That's the point of personal responsibility, or in the case of children being added when v young by parents, the parents responsibility. Learn how to change your settings. You can even have it so you are totally invisible. If the children were under 13 then they should't have a Facebook account anyway. I take the article to be about babies and very little children, not children who are actually going to be posting etc.

Honestly it's obvious lots of people have no ideas about how Facebook actually works. If you don't want your personal information up there then it's not going to be up there. If you want it to be totally open, have your phone number etc out there then you can. If you don't want to then you don't. You can't be forced to let someone be your friend, you say no!
If you don't want to be found in a search you can't be. If someone is not your friend then they can't tag your in a photo in a way that links to your page.

Speaking of privacy, if I was to Google myself, I can find old comments such as this made to the ´óÏó´«Ã½, under my real name, made back when I was naive enough to post under my real name. Now, I'm not particularly ashamed of those comments, but all the same, a potential employer could read them, and form a judgement about me... I'm not happy about this. I'd like the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to delete comments older than say, a year... what on earth is a valid reason for keeping them for the world to see, especially when they can be read out of context?

I fail to see how publishing baby pictures online, or news of a birth, etc. is any different to - say - birth notices in newspapers. Why wait 18 years to steal someone's identity - get an 18 year old copy of the Times!

Can't link it all together? Do us a favour. Phone directories, voting registers (you can, after all, see the unedited one as long as you do not use it commercially), birth, marriage and death registers - its all public, and always has been. Chuck in local newspapers, school newsletters, and so on. Chances are your local library has a useful index. You are not invisible, even if you treat the internet like it was some sort of plague carrier. Okay, its a touch more difficult and takes more fuss, but if you are aiming to steal an identity I think you'll go the extra mile.

As for the ludicrous, mad, insane fuss about photographs of children... words fail me. Really. And now if the paranoia is spreading to adults too then heaven help anyone with a camera taking the fascinating (and often historically important) street scenes highlighted by one writer.

Can people please get a grip. If someone was intending to snatch a child it is wildly unlikely that they'd stand around taking pictures of them first - and it has to be said that child abduction by strangers, while obviously distressing, is unbelievably rare. Statistically speaking the greatest threat to your child is probably you, or someone you (and they) know and trust.

Whilst there are plenty of arguments to either side of this debate. If you read back through all the posts, most of the arguments to support parents having "baby blogs" all refer to hysteria and paranoia. Personally I think that the people who call it paranoia are a little naive. References have been made to the freely available information from places such as public libraries. The difference is that in order to get information from a public library, you firstly have to travel there, which means that the casual "I.D Thief" isnt going to bother with people who live several hundred miles away, if that were the only source of information.
The internet means that your information is available to the entire planet, and with far less effort then it formerly would have taken. Thieves are opportunists, give them a chance and they will take it.
People having internet accounts hacked by trojans, key loggers, etc, is common place, and it is usually people who have this "Its all paranoia" attitude that get targetted, because they think they are safe, and don't take the necessary precautions.
Placing information about your newborn child on facebook, may see like harmless fun, but the fact is, as well as the potential embarassment later in life to your offspring, facebook's security still has holes.
People here have said "you clearly don't understand how facebook works"
when they themselves don't actually know. There is no such thing as paranoia where the safety of your children is concerned, and following the trend of "Hip" people who think that life begins and ends with social networking is simply increasing any risks that stand.

EMC wrote:

Give me a break! This increasing paranoia is driving me nuts! You may as well stop taking any photos or videos of your children. That should satisfy your paranoia.

#########

It is not about taking photos, but many people forget that putting photos of your kids on your facebook profile is not necessarily just sharing it with a couple of friends.

In the days when we still knew and understood how to relate to people in the flesh, we might have bored them with photo albums when they popped round for tea.

However, we would not have dreamed of nailing thousands of copies of them to all the telegraph poles around the area; especially those completely unnecessary bath-time ones!

Putting images up on the internet is much like doing just that. And even if your privacy options are set to friends only, are you sure you want to share those images with ALL of your friends? Do you know, really know who all of your friends really are?

And then there are all those bogs "which are not linked anywhere" where you only give the addresses to friends. Pity that they have been put on Blogger or Wordpress and have been syndicated to the world without you even realising it!

And even if you think you have covered everything, then some company comes along in 10 years time, buys the data, changes the rules, and suddenly it is all exposed everywhere!

@Hastings
If you are that untrusting of people, then perhaps they shouldn't be friends with you on Facebook? Remember what the word friend means. And then only add / accept real friends on there. Problem solved.
Or you can group your Facebook friends, and only share things with certain groups (so only your "real" friends get to see that picture of your new kid).

It's an interesting view that appears to be endorsing the 'right' of SM networks to disclaim responsibility for their security issues. As has already happened in numerous cases the biggest issue here will be caused by outsourcing, fraud and inadequate security. The banks already know that most companies cannot be trusted to keep data securely on a typical B2C website.

The capability to track(and sell to) children via mobile phones might be a better arena to address.

WelshBluebird1 wrote:

@Hastings
If you are that untrusting of people, then perhaps they shouldn't be friends with you on Facebook? Remember what the word friend means. And then only add / accept real friends on there. Problem solved.

###

Your logic is spot on - however, most people do not work logically but rather instinctively. They do in real life (chatting to someone they have never met before at a bus stop, for example) and they carry that onto the social sites.

Unfortunately, you can have a very rich conversation at a bus stop with someone, tell them all kinds of things about your life, without actually giving anything away.

On social sites like Facebook, to achieve the same thing, you have to add them as a friend, perhaps, let them have exposure to other facets of your life that you have revealed on line, and so on.

The problem is with the technology. Back at the bustop, you can open your wallet and quickly show the photo of your pet dog that you carry around. Online, the process is much more complicated. To replicate how easily we communicate face to face, with all the layers that that communication is made up of, is incredibly complicated, and the technology is simply not up to it. In real life you may show a photo of your dog to the person at the bus stop, but the person in the bus who you sit next to, you may, instinctively not with to show that photo to. However, you may reveal something completely different to them.

How do you achieve that subtlety online?

From my point of view, the default starting point should always be that everything is private - that should be mandatory for social sites. But quite how you can make it so that you can change permissions on the fly easily and in a multitude of ways, and often temporary, I do not know.

This is probably why I only use Facebook as a loose extension of my company website, blog and a few other bits and pieces. I assume everyone on their is a vague acquaintance, I do not assume what people may or may not be able to see so only put up such stuff as I have made public anyway.

Anything private goes no where near a social networking site!

I have to say, I have a Facebook page for my son. But it's not out of some sort of weird narcissism - it's for practicality.

Both me and my partner have large, extended families that are scattered all over the world. And usually, we have nothing to do with each other's families.
Creating a page exclusively for updates on our son's progress made perfect sense, rather than each of us having to update separately so that all grandparents/aunts/uncles/etc. can see how he's doing.

No, we don't put up any pictures that could be taken and used by paedophiles (even if they could access them, as we have the privacy settings turned up so that only family can see) - why would we put photos of our son naked/in the bath on the internet? That sort of thing is best kept for family photo albums, so when he's older we can get them out and thoroughly embarrass him! We don't even have his full name on there.

As long as you don't splurge every single detail of your child's life, I don't really see what the problem is.