By Cory Bronson, co-founder of Wee-Web, a place where you can feel safe bringing your kids into your life online.
Disclosure: We liked Wee-Web so much we’re joining their affiliate program. We don’t do this unless we think the company is a fantastic find and would fully benefit our members.
- Did you know that strangers can view pictures of your child even when privacy settings on social networking sites (such as facebook, etc.) are set?
- Did you know that strangers can tell a whole lot about you, your children and your family simply by looking at your facebook page (i.e. names and ages of your children, birthdays of you children, where you live, when/where you vacation, etc.)?
- Did you know that with many new high tech cameras, strangers can tell the exact location where you took the picture?
We always thought that facebook and other social networking sites were just a fun way to stalk ex-boyfriends, connect with new and old friends and share family pictures and stories. What we did not realize is that there are some risks with openly sharing information and pictures on the internet and that just clicking the “privacy setting” does not mean everything is totally private. We can’t tell you how many times we have been mindlessly “facebook surfing” only to find ourselves looking at whole wedding albums of complete strangers! Which made us wonder, if we can view random people’s private wedding pictures, can strangers in turn look at a pictures of our children without knowing?
The short answer is yes, the long answer lies in the rest of this important Q&A with our good friend and co-founder of Wee-Web, Cory Bronson. Cory and Laura became friends years ago when Cory was working at Giggle. Since then she has started Wee-Web which is a “secure social networking site for families,” or as we like to call it, “mom facebook.” Wee-web is also our pick for best social networking service for families!
Click here to learn more about Wee Web. Special offer for babybites moms only: receive 15% when you upgrade to Wee Web Premium (use code: BABYBITES15)
Below Cory answers babybites community’s most frequently-asked-questions about their kids’ digital footprints, online privacy, how to share safely online.
“I get excited by what we do!” says Cory. “It’s amazing when family members who live 3,000 miles away get to be part of a kid’s first laugh or step – that’s how life-long bonds begin. While the social network aspect of what we do is so significant, what’s as important to our families is keeping their kids safe in a quickly-evolving world of social media and digital communities. Protecting a child’s privacy isn’t about parents restricting what they share, it’s about them staying smart about how they share it.”
Don’t “privacy setting” on Facebook, etc. protect strangers from viewing my pictures and content?
Yes and no. Privacy settings don’t function in an “on” and “off” manner – for each site you use, you will need to customize the privacy settings to meet the level of privacy that you feel most comfortable with. Don’t assume that a site’s default settings are going to keep your material safe as most social networking sites aren’t as focused on privacy as they are on encouraging wide sharing. Before posting content of your child to a photo/video sharing site, blog, or social networking site, customize your Privacy Settings so that you know exactly who has access to view, comment on and download what you post. Also, be cautious when giving any third party applications access (like social networking games, or photo printing services) to your account because the privacy settings you’ve set up on one service may not pass through to another.
I heard that even when I delete a picture of me or my child from facebook or another “share site” that people could still view them. Is this true?
Yes, it is possible. On many sharing/social network sites, when you ‘delete’ or ‘remove’ content such as a photo or video from your profile, what’s removed are the access links to it (urls, thumbnails etc), however the content still remains on the host server. What’s the issue? If someone copied the link before the content was removed, the old link, in many cases, will still link to the content on the site’s server. This is also true for user accounts: when you delete your account – it’s often kept on the site’s server in it’s entirety (their thinking: they hope you return). Check a site’s deletion policy in the Terms of Service before posting any content. Also: you should find out what rights you have to your content before posting anything as some services reserve the right to reproduce or distribute your content!
Can someone really steal or compromise my child’s identity just from the information that’s available online?
It depends on what information you post, but you’d be surprised how seemingly innocuous information can be used against you. Consider this: your friend (who includes her maiden name as part of her full name) posts a birth announcement of her child to her social networking profile. The announcement contains the baby’s full name (including middle) plus his/her date of birth. Her college roommate comments on the post. If your friend’s security constraints allow friends’ comments to appear in the friend’s feed, then the entire birth announcement post is now available to the friend’s entire (and maybe completely public) profile. The key information: the child’s name, date of birth and the mother’s maiden name. Together that information can help an identity thief establish a false identity and put the child’s identity and credit at real risk. You need to be really vigilant about how, where and what identifying information about your child is available for public access. While it’s no fun to consider worst-case scenarios, if that information falls into the wrong hands, it could have lasting effects on a child.
I’ve heard a lot about the risks and hazards of geotagging (location information tags). Could a stranger really find out where my kids are using a photo?
Yes! Newer camera models and many smartphones now tag photos/videos with the GPS coordinates of the photo/video’s location (known as Exif data). A number of services (such as Google Maps) can actually read this data and give the exact location of where the photo or video was taken. What’s the threat? That someone you don’t know could find a photo of your kids (taken at home, or your local park, etc.) and have more information about your kids than you want. Solutions: In all cases, you want to make sure that you are posting securely. However there are things you can do if you want to post a photo or video on an open page, such as a blog. 1. For digital photo/video cameras: check the Exif or GPS setting, you should be able to turn it on/off. For your Smartphone: check the location services settings and turn off location for any apps you use to take photos. 3. Take a look at the privacy settings for the site you post to as some sites remove the Exif data during upload.
My brother posts photos he takes of my kids on Facebook. Do my privacy settings protect those photos too?
No, they don’t. This can be a very serious issue for parents – especially if their friends and family don’t think about online safety the same way. Many photos of kids come from family and friends (not only the parents), and social networks are perfect for sharing everything with one another. However, unless you are the one post that photo to your profile, it won’t be protected by your security settings. Something else to consider: for any social network you’re on, when you link someone to be part of your network, you not only give them permission to view your content, but by default, you also give them permission to download, share, or post it somewhere else on the web. So you need to ask yourself: “Will all 500 of my Facebook friends share my sense of privacy?” Solution? You can make it easy by having a designated network site just for your kids that lets friends and family post too. Just be sure that the site is password protected, and invite your friends/family to be part of your kids’ network. Creating and sharing with a smaller network of people you trust will give you peace of mind to share more.
I have tons of media of my kids. Do I need to think differently about security for photos vs. videos vs. stories?
Yes and no. You do if you store everything on different sites. If you use one service for video hosting, one for photo management/organization, and one to write about their stories (journal/blog), then yes. Using multiple platforms means having to keep up-to-date on the settings and security for each site, managing different networks, data tags, searchability, commenting permissions etc. which probably won’t be uniform among all the sites. However, you won’t need to if you use a site that has photo/video hosting as well as blogging (storytelling) capabilities. By using a single service, all of your content is uniformly protected under one privacy setting. Cory’s thoughts: I strongly advise parents to use a single service for all their child’s media. In my opinion, while reducing work is always better for time-constrained parents, the real argument for consolidating services is so that you can better supervise and protect your child’s digital footprint. Having everything hosted on a single service gives you the peace of mind that whatever information about your children that’s on the web is in one spot – so you know exactly where to find it, how it’s protected, and who has access to it.
What is a ‘digital footprint’ and what implications could it have on my child’s life?
A digital footprint is your online trail, or the collection of information about you that exists in the digital world. So why do you need to think about this for your baby who can’t even walk? Because you’re already building it. Every time you post something online about your child, you add to his or her digital footprint. According to a recent study by security AVG 92% of US children have a digital footprint by the time they are 2 years old. The vast majority (70%) of the moms surveyed said that they posted about their children so that they could share it with friends and family, however, more than one fifth (22%) of them said that they posted because they wanted to add more content to their social network profiles. What you post now can have lasting effects on your child; you need to consider whether what you share, and with whom, is going to benefit your child when they are older.
Privately sharing the excitement of your child’s life with close family/friends online is important and helps foster relationships, even across distance that will be important to your child as (s)he grows up (we hear this all the time from our users). Sharing on a private network protects your child’s digital footprint because parents control the distribution of the information (so it can’t be searched for) and who has access to it (private network). Sharing on open platforms can make content widely available and searchable and, for all intents and purposes, permanently online. A suggestion to parents: consider the lasting effects of your sharing habits and remember that while they are tiny now, they may not be happy if in 15 to 20 years, their friend, employer or admissions officer finds a bathtub photo of them online.