Posting pictures of children on this site.

Excellent post Marydoll ??

I totally agree Marydoll..

Thank you Volver, it is something I feel very strongly about. I spent a fair amount of time, alerting Facebook and other social media sites to illegal acccounts by children in my school. It was illegal to have an account, if you are under twelve. I was shocked, when a parent alerted me to a public account, with a picture of an eight year old girl , posing provocatively in a bikini, complete with full make ? up!

As someone who has worked in Child Protection I completely agree Marydoll.

Thank you Marydoll. I recently commented on a post, saying that it wasn't a good idea to post photos of a grandchild, and a couple of people asked me why not?

I would have thought it was fairly obvious why not. It's one thing to share a photo with trusted friends, but quite another on an open forum.

Totally agree Marydoll -

Thanks for posting this Marydoll. I too have been concerned to see pictures of grandchildren recently and wondered if the parents knew they were being posted. We all know that paedophiles find rich pickings on the internet.

Thank you Marydoll.

I see that one recent thread of concern has been deleted.

GN is an open forum and its security is poor, Witness the neverending new and never-to-be-heard-of-again "members" who start provocative or contentious threads some of which are clearly hoaxes. Or the regular spam which has been generated by text-recognition bots. Image-recognition bots exist too. Sites called Mumsnet and Gransnet are obvious hunting grounds for paedophiles.

It is all the more unfortunate, in my opinion, that this thread has 'top billing' in the Daily Newsletter this morning.
Even more attention is therefore drawn to the unsuitability (and presence) of such photo usage in these online fora.

Absolutely agree Marydoll . Thank you for this thread. X

When our granddaughter was small, her parents posted a film of her on holiday playing by a pool. They were pleased to get a few hundred views until it was pointed out to them who could be viewing it. They took it down immediately.

Well done Marydoll . I am always a bit shocked that so many people still do it, and at the amount of information people are happy to give out.

I have been surprised to see photographs of grandchildren on here of late. There should perhaps be directions on the site as some grans apparently don’t realise that what they have done is unwise if not dangerous.

I agree with you Marydoll. I never post pictures of my DGC on here and only on my closed FB account with the permission of the parents.
Any pictures on here could end up in the national newspapers or anywhere in fact.

Thank you for pointing that out, Marydoll.

Remember at the start of GN when we (almost) all had profiles, and often a list of the names and ages of our DGC? Some people put a lot of information on them. I think most of us removed our profiles when a thread got into the DM and we realised that it wasn't difficult for anyone to get our information.

Some children need protecting from their silly grans!

I've never seen photos of children on Mumsnet - most mums would go mad if they knew.

As an aside, I think children deserve privacy.

As a grandma I instinctively want to jump to a photo of my DGD when someone mentions ballet, horseriding etc or of my DGSs when rugby or tennis is being spoken of. I guess it's a sort of pride thing or just being spontaneously natural.

As a person who has had the possible ramifications explained to me, however, I now think twice and sit on my hands.

I was told I shouldn't post photos of my puppy due to the rise in dogknapping, but today anyone can have him! (Think newly planted lavenders).

Seriously though, Marydoll makes a very good point.

Totally agree - I don’t even post grandchildren pictures on my own fb account. We do have a WhatsApp family group where we share pictures

Excellent post, Marydoll

Some schools still post photos of pupils on their websites, yet parents are warned not to post anything on FB from school events which might include a child other than their own.

Thanks for the timely reminder MaryDoll
You are absolutely right.
I once did a face recognition scan of my photos on my own computer and was horrified to see that even babies were distinguishable.
Heaven help us if this puts any child in danger.
I realise it's a sad reflection of our times but it is the downside of the internet.

My post was not meant to criticize anyone, but to alert posters to the implications and ramifications of posting pictures of children. I have been thinking of posting my concerns for weeks. Today's deleted thread prompted me to do so.
Its easy for me to preach about it, I have had extensive training on this subject and had a duty of care to parents, staff and pupils. Call me an internet safety evangelist! ?

Totally agree Marydoll
Some posters do give out a lot of information about where they live, sometimes it’s quite easy to pinpoint their homes and personal circumstances.
Fine if they’re ok with that, but I feel it is sometimes inadvertent

Obviously grandparents should not be boring others with their numerous 'cute' grandchildren but also I think parents should accept more responsibility for their children's online safety. They are quite happy to give relatively young children phones, tablets, laptops etc., but if there is any unpleasantness as a result they're up on their hindlegs expecting the school to spend (waste) time solving a problem of their own creation. If a child has to have a phone, because no child has ever walked home alone in the history of the world, maybe a basic phone would suffice.

I meant to add that GNHQ have a duty of care too!!
I'm on a roll now! ?