My husband has put his figurative foot down. No posting pictures of our children on the internet.
My main plan with this blog was to be fairly anonymous so that I can post my beefs and gripes without fear of repercussions. I can be, at times, candidly honest on this page with regards to family and friends. No I know my mom's old adage 'if you can't say something nice, then don't say it at all'. But really, some times you just need to b#@*h. Really get it off my chest and suddenly, I feel just a little bit better. I would; however, feel absolutely mortified if my BIL & SIL knew how I really felt about their germaphobe behaviour. (see earlier posts).
I digress. I have been reading many other blogs online and love to see pictures of people's families etc and have been thinking of posting several of my kids now and then of their more zanier antics etc. My husband disagrees.
He was listening to the radio on his way home and heard a report about how bad guys (translation - perverts) are taking photos of kids off the net and using them for their own purposes, posting them in other places etc. Because let's face it, most of us don't know how to protect our photos from being "borrowed" like the really smart people do.
In fact, if you do an image search on google with the words, children, girl, playing, names etc... you actually pull up a photos of kids from various peoples webpages and blogs. Kind of creepy if you think about it. So I don't know how to stop that from happening. Maybe it mainly has to do with the description of the photo... I don't know. Maybe it's just a matter of not doing head shots, again, I don't know.
If anyone out there has any suggestions I'd love to hear it.
I'm looking into watermarking the images. I have disabled the right mouse click functionality on my blog so you can't copy them from the blog itself, but I don't know how to keep my pictures from showing up a google image search. It's a very valid concern. I definitely limit the photos I use, but haven't kept them off of my blog all together...
ReplyDeleteOther than the banner of my blog (which is actually cropped and will be changed shortly anyway) I always crop or doctor the shots of my kids.
ReplyDeleteShortly after starting my blog people who typed in "perv sites" and "women and animal" type sites were being directed to my blog. I have no idea why, but I decided then that I was keeping my kids to myself. You just never know who's out there...with lots of time and twisted minds.
While I do feel that this is a concern worth worrying about there are some other things that go through my mind. These people have no idea where we live. The number of people out there looking to harm your kids is much smaller then the mass media makes them out to be. I think that the last thing that I think about is the fact that our school district has pictures of my kids associated with a location. This worries me much more then posting them onto a blog that could be anywhere in the world. I am not sure if there is a way to keep it out of a Google search. I am going to ask my husband when he comes home. He is an internet marketing manager specializing in SEO so he may just have a trick or two. I will write back if he as any ideas on how to stop this!
ReplyDeleteBecca
Please visit me at http://www.askbecca.com
You're right Becca but I guess my concern is not so much that they'll figure out where my kids are and kidnap them sort of thing but the idea of them using say my daughter's picture in her bathing suit for nefarious purposes and sharing them with all their pervy friends.. kinda creeps me out. I guess what you don't know doesn't hurt you but still....
ReplyDeletePlease let us know if you find anything earth-shattering!
ReplyDeleteI do post pics of my kids, but I have become wary of this, especially after hearing a few stories. I have looked into watermarking my pics as well, and unless absolutely necessary, I try to keep the pics cropped in a certain way.
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