Online privacy is a big issue. As a blogger, I like to share things about my family. As a cop's wife, I want to maintain our privacy. As someone who knows for a fact that someone was hunting for our family online, I'm probably a little more careful that most. Blogging is a fine balancing act for me-- sharing details without sharing enough that someone could identify us without a lot more work.
I don't use photos of my kids here. Period. There are many times when I've considered it, or when I've wanted to share an especially cute shot, but I don't, because I know what can happen.
Today, I read yet another story about a mom's photos of her child being stolen and used on a commercial site. This particular site wasn't "adult" in nature, but if you read through the comments, you'll find that some are. Ugh. This isn't the first time I've read about this, and I'm sure it won't be the last.
If you do post photos of your kids, please, at minimum, use a watermark. You can use any photo editing software to simply write your name across the photo, or, you can easily create a nice watermark using a free program.
You can also add "no right click" coding to your blog, which blocks people from being able to copy your stuff easily. (More advanced computer folks can get around the code.) You can find details on that here.
What do you think? Do you feel safe in sharing personal photos?
Just wanted to comment quickly and recommend the watermark over the right click code. The right click code can be easily circumvented. I'm not going to tell you how here so that information doesn't get into the wrong hands (although people who want to steal them probably already know), but I would advise on the watermark instead.
ReplyDeleteThanks! =)
I agree completely with you. I had a personal blog a couple of years ago. I used it to update family that was not in our immediate area with just pictures and things my kids were doing/into. I did have a tracker on it, and I found one day that someone from Europe had gone thru my entire site in like 20 minutes and downloaded or clicked on, which I can never know for sure. It was devastating! I mean, we think it will not happen to us, then it does. Respecting my husband's wishes, I shut it down. Sad, b/c something so innocent is taken advantage of by other people for negative things. So, I agree and I think it's great to remind people to be careful...it happens more than we know!
ReplyDelete