I've been torn about the issue of internet safety and privacy lately because I'm considering making our blog public. I want it to be easier for friends and family to see updates about our family, and I also want to share with others what's successful for us and contribute to the online community that supports faith-centered marriages and families. However, I want to be smart about our personal information, especially our photos. I'm thinking a lot about our future children and how my decisions about internet use will impact them.
Anyway, here are some notes I took from the presentation:
- Social media is only for ages 13+
- Snapchat is bad. Also Kik.
- Kids with 200 or fewer friends are less likely to be bullied.
- When the officer tells parents of bullied children to ask their children to stop using the platform where they're being bullied, a common response is "You want me to punish my child for something someone else is doing?!" But it's not punishing, it's protecting.
- Only friend people you have touched on the shoulder.
- Kids won't die if they don't have access to internet.
- Predators seek male and female middle-schoolers.
- Children who have always been surrounded with trustworthy adults are more likely to trust sketchy adults online and send them info/photos that they shouldn't. Kids shouldn't be too trusting.
- Don't share your location when you're on vacation. (Duh!)
- Sending or receiving naked pictures of kids is a felony charge.
- Suicide attention seekers are kids/people who put their problems on social media to get compliments/attention. After a while, they need to up the ante to get the same amount of attention.
- Address, phone number, school, age, parents' work, sport team information, play dates, boyfriend/girlfriend info, swimsuit pictures, GPS coordinates should not be shared on social media.
- Some people just like to creep on your kids.
- Blocking and deleting is the new black belt: cyber-bullying self-defense involves blocking and deleting friends—teach this and empower kids to take care of themselves.
- "Child features" on phones are available to keep kids from getting online when you don't want them to.
- Remember people can hack into and activate your webcam.
- Try having a central charging station in your home where kids have to turn in their devices at night.
- iPhones have a feature where you have to have a password in order to download an app. Enable this for your kids' phones.
Most of these guidelines I agree with, but some of them I'm not sure about. In particular, I'm not sure about the list of things to never post. From other articles I read, the biggest security issue is keeping your children from agreeing to meet with a stranger on their own; otherwise, whether or not people know your address isn't really going to affect whether they stalk your kids or your neighbors' kids. The other reason you might not want to post photos publicly is because sometimes people will take them and use them for nefarious purposes, or even just use them as if they were stock images. However, according to this source (a very interesting story, by the way), creepers don't usually steal pictures of kids if there's another person in the picture or if the child isn't facing the camera in the photo. Additionally, people are less likely to take images as their own if they are a low-resolution photo or if they are watermarked.
So, for now, these are our families rules about posting on this blog (and potential Instagram?) if it becomes public:
- Turn off all location settings (that tag posts/photos with location).
- Don't give away personal contact info (including address), where we work, schools, upcoming vacations.
- Consider whether the people involved would want the photo seen by future friends, employers, etc. before posting.
- Photos:
- Add watermark to high-quality images or reduce the resolution.
- No nudity (shirts and pants on, even for little babies).
- No photos with just a child facing the camera.
- Ask before posting pictures that include other children; ask others to get permission from me as well.
- Don't share the best moments. Print them out, hang them on the wall, keep them in an album, or maybe email them to close family, but don't post them.
I feel like this is a good balance of sharing and safety for this blog. Honestly, there are bloggers out there that share way more than that and I don't think they're being irresponsible either.
I have no idea what to do about information on Facebook, though. I recently went through my Facebook profile and locked it down as tight as possible, but I can't tell if there's a setting to change what friends of friends see, and there's no way I can control what photos of me/my family that my friends/friends of friends post. Hmmm.
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