Saturday, October 2, 2010

How Nervous are you...

About Internet safety and your children's pictures? About sharing too much personal information? About predators or thieves getting the information? Or just about protecting your children's privacy for their future?

I carefully guard the personal information that may affect other's, but if it is in regards to me, I'm pretty much an open book. I don't talk about other family members, post their pics or give full names out. When it comes to my children, I do not discuss anything that I or they may deem personal. If I share information, it's past information, and nothing that "may" happen or may affect their future.

As for posting their pics, I feel like there is much worse out there in the world to worry about. I don't post anything that may be or can be taken the wrong way, altered, or deemed inappropriate. I post school pictures, family shots or group events.

My sister is extremely private person and refuses to share her family information on the Internet. She has made her point of view recently to us all to not post pictures of her kids on any sites. She does not want to divulge their information and compromise their future safety. I understand where's shes coming from and I respect her wishes.

So it made me start thinking...we all share information so freely among us here in blogger world. We kinda all feel like family from afar, following each other's adventures and journeys in life. Do you worry?

And now that I have you thinking about it, will this affect how you share or will you alter how you post information?

It doesn't change anything for me, but it will make me analyze my pictures more closely before posting them.

I read a story recently about a girl who was on a social network site and was posting her school team mascots and how they won a game, plus had pictures of her up and how old she was. She also in one of her pictures had the front of her house showing in them, with her house number on it. An undercover Federal Agent googled school mascots, found what town she lived in, had her picture and her street number and what the house looked like. He waited outside her house and watched her walk home from school and enter the empty house alone and noticed she was alone for several hours. When her parents came home, he rang the bell and introduced himself. He explained what he had done and why. His teenage daughter had been kidnapped and murdered because of her Internet safety being violated. His mission in life was to protect other girls from this happening to them. This agent had flown from 3 states away on his own dime to protect and warn this family. The parents called the daughter down from her room and talked with her in front of the officer. She broke down crying when she realized how close she had come from danger.

That Officer could have easily been a Predator.

Be safe out there...

XOXO

2 comments:

Leah said...

I never post our last name, address, the kids' school names, teacher names, or our exact city's name. Like you, I post about our adventures AFTER THE FACT ("we WENT to see Jack Johnson this past weekend" and never "We're going to see Jack Johnson this weekend"). I'm careful about what I post in pics. I'd rather be too careful, than not careful enough.

jmt said...

I do concern myself with these things once in awhile. I try not to give out too much info and like Leah, usually post what happened AFTER the fact. Even if you don't state your location, your IP address gives you away and that is easily taken from a semi-knowledgeable computer geek. I tend to worry more about local, neighborhood predators that you don't know are actually there. People could be down the street watching your children's daily routines, etc. That's what worries me. And why my kids will be in daycare until they are 18. :)