I had someone favorite a photo of my children on flickr.I thought it was weird because they didn’t have a profile or any photos of their own. I had just blocked them when I saw I had flickr mail. I checked the mail and it was from a mother that had photos of her daughter which had been favorited by this person. She sent the email below to all the parents of children whose photos were favorited by this person.
you might have noticed that a flickr member by the name (*see below) has favorited several of your pix. they did mine as well, but only pix of my daughter and most were of her in a bathing suit. i always go look at the pictures of people who favorite mine, this person has no pix. i flickr mailed them, nicely noting that they had favorited my pix and i’d like to see some from them. they have not responded. so i thought i would see what else they favorited because i was a little disconcerted by the choices they had made to favorite. i was very surprised to see several pages of very similar favorited pix of little girls in bathing suits and other pix of children. i tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it just made me too uneasy. so i blocked them. this means that they no longer have access to my pix and any they have favorited are taken away as well. i highly recommend that you take the same action.
i hope this does not upset your day. but i think people should know about these things.
I took a look at the person in question’s flickr favorites today. Many are now gone. Way to go parents! The photos that are left are mostly of girls in bathing suits or their bellies are showing. The photo that was favorited had Petite Clown’s belly is showing as she backed up against her father because she was afraid of the horse they were petting.
I am going back to how I did it before. All photos of my kids will be private for families eyes only on flickr. I can place whatever photos I want on my blog and even if the photos are private readers on this blog will be able to see them.
I only recently started making the kids pictures public in flickr on a regular basis. Before I did it only occasionally. I am still trying to decide if I should make all the photos of my children private on flickr and perhaps even stop putting them on this blog.
I would like to hear what others think about this. Do you make your children’s photos private on flickr? Do you put pictures of your kids on your blog? What about pictures of yourself?
*I have taken the name out. I am not 100 percent sure they are a freak even if I am highly suspicious of that fact. However, that is not enough to send everyone to their flickr profile with pitchforks and fire.
There are a handful of public photos of my kids on Flickr. Most are for friends and family only, and a few are private.
I have put photos of my kids on my blog a few times…maybe twice or three times. The last time was over a year ago.
My blog is about my life, not theirs. And I don’t want them to get upset with me down the road because of embarrassing (to them) photos. They have a right to privacy.
Also, there are a lot of creeps out there.
IF you set the photos to private, then I think nobody but you can see them. If you set them to friends and family and carefully note those friends and family, then I think you can share with those who want to enjoy.
There are many odd people out there so yes it is right to watch and to be careful..
I do hope you post the photo above as I can’t see it, or try to make your photos a bit smaller..
Expatraveler,
You may not be able to see it since it is marked private for family only in flickr. In the past when I did that there were some readers that couldn’t see my photos for whatever reason while the majority of my readers could.
I think I am going to stop putting so many pics up of the kids and focus more on photos of where we live.
I do not have any photos on my blog yet. This is due to a lack of computer skills, something I hope to overcome LOL. Once I am able to post photos on the blog, I will limit photos of me and my children to ‘distance/background/etc’ shots and possibly size the photos (as soon as I figure out how!) so that we cannot be seen closeup.
Eventually I hope to have a private photo album on-line available to family and friends. I will be very cautious regarding who I permit (from on-line friends) accessibility, limiting it to those I am familiar with (blogs I have read for sometime).
Another blog I read lead me to another photo theft problem Orkut —> http://www.notesfromthetrenches.com/2007/09/29/what-is-going-on/
Of course, anyone can right click your photos (on your blog) to save them on their hard drive. That is a concern of mine also.
Lisa,
I read about Orkut about four days ago. I think that was the topper for me. All of this has been going around in my head for about a week now.
Alison,
While I don’t have a problem putting photos of my kids here on the blog or talking about my kids on my blog I am concerned about the fact that I can not control who lurks out there.
I know several of Dooce’s readers accuse her of making a living exploiting her child. However, I don’t see it that way when I read her blog. If any kid is going to be teased when they get older it is her kid. However, I bet most people read her blog because of those posts. Then, we have Petite Anglaise who writes about her daughter but rarely posts photos of her child and if she does her daughter isn’t recognizable in the photo. Again, the only reason I read Petite Anglaise is because of her posts about her daughter…all the other posts I could care less about. I don’t mean that to be mean…I am just being honest.
Is Petite Anglaise a better mother than Dooce? Is Dooce a bad mother because she doesn’t respect her kids privacy?
Actually, that is a good question. Not that she is a bad mother but is she respecting her child’s privacy? I think most people will be divided on this one.
When I decided to put pics of my kids on this blog I thought about Dooce, Petite Anglaise and all the other mothers out there with kids…how did they handle it? It seems that most mothers and fathers do put pics of their kids up. So, I slowly started put up pics of my kids too. I blog about my life. My life is my kids since they are with me 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Now, I am more concerned about protecting my children which does tie in with privacy. Do I have the right to put up their picture and endanger their lives even if the chances are slim that someone will actually hurt them because they saw my kids photos here?
I don’t think it is worth the chance even if it is slim.
Hi Pumpkin,
I sent you a private message in reply to this post in your e-mail (also includes some photos of MY kids in the e-mail, for you). :-)
Cathy
i put a few pictures of my children on my blog but i don’t feel comfortable about it. *
i hope i ll never find them somewhere else. my wife doesn t want that i share such pictures. we live in belgium and we re a bit scared about the stories we heard on the news.
nice blog anyway
bye
Cathy,
Thank you and you will have an email back from me when you get up in the morning. That seven hour time difference is a big one!
Patdem,
I understand completely. As parents it is natural to want to put up photos on our blogs.
People are always pulling out their wallets to show their kids pictures to family, co-workers and friends.
When we have a blog for a while our readers become our friends and we want to share photos of our children with our friends like all proud parents do.
It is too bad the world has crazy and sick people in it.
People like that really exist believe me.
Last week a student downloaded on emule a full season from a cartoon (i don’t mention the name) and he discovered 10000 pedophils pics.
For my job (police) I had to open that dvd just to check if it was true or not and I transmit it to a special squad.
I saw so many folders (about 80) with such names as “babypics” or “girls 6-8 y.old” “10-12″ etc…
I didn’t watch the pics because just the idea of watching them makes me sick. Thats why i’m afraid about it.
Patdem,
It is good you didn’t look because I don’t think I could get the horror of the pics out of my head afterwards. It breaks my heart to think of all the kids. What would make someone do something like that? I can’t understand that. I can’t. It must have been a terrible surprise for the student that found those pics.
yes he was shocked and he only saw 2 of them…