It’s a crazy world!
Even before the Internet and computers took over the world, it was tough to keep children safe. Every time we heard about a kidnapping or even worse, the murder of a child, we had that ‘don’t talk to strangers’ conversation with our kids and made sure they repeated everything we said back to them. We paid closer attention to their school security measures and protested at the slightest show of laxity.
Things have changed from back then. Predators no longer meet our kids at the park, at school or on their way home. They are finding them on the Internet through their social media pages and worse still, through our own pages.
How far is too far?
While we are aware of these risks, we do not want to live in some kind of paranoid state that prevents our children from having a life. Therefore, we still post their photos and allow them to have these pages and run them as they wish. We put boundaries on the kind of photos they can put up, having all their privacy settings on, and we do not put their names on the photos we put on our pages. But is this enough?
As long as they are dressed, it’s alright
The logic here is pretty sound. Predators will not be interested in photos of kids that are fully dressed, right? You would think so but apparently, child pornography includes photos of kids that are fully dressed. Imagine how scary and creepy it can be to find your child’s picture on one of those disgusting sites!
It doesn’t happen all that often, does it?
You may not have a lot of personal accounts of these things happening to you or your friends, but it is happening. Many kids online are not aware of the need for privacy, posting all kinds of photos of themselves online. These predators know this and are able to access these photos for their own crazy uses.
Further, apart from sexual predators, there are online bullies that will take advantage of the lack of privacy settings to use your child’s photos to bully them. These pictures and videos quickly go viral and can do a lot of damage to your child presently and in the future. After all, your digital footprint is virtually impossible to erase so imagine the stress if a search of your name reveals some embarrassing distorted version of an originally nice picture of your kids.
I’m alright; all the privacy settings are up!
Are you absolutely sure? You need to have facial recognition off, auto tagging turned off, photos set to ‘only seen by me’ and posts set to ‘friends’ only. Nothing else short of this can ensure your privacy. In fact, you can better save your photos from theft by using http://www.phtosafe.com and similar photo safety services. Only then can you be sure that your photos and videos are truly safe.
It takes a village…
You may be taking all the necessary measures to protect your children but you need to teach them, and everyone around them to be safe online. Relatives and friends may not have the same safety standards as you do so your kids and their kids could still be at risk. Educate everyone around you to make sure that you are as safe as possible.
Author Bio
Mark Hall is a cyber safety expert who gives regular talks at schools for both parents and kids. He worked as a consultant with http://phtosafe.com/ on some of their features.
