Protect yourself on Social Media

Post photos and information about yourself and your loved ones with great caution, even if your social media platforms have privacy protections.

Carefully consider who you’re sharing videos and photographs with. Don’t perform any explicit acts online. Once a photo is posted online if is incredibly difficult to delete it. Multiple ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ could send a picture of your grandchild halfway round the world to people you don’t even know, and once it’s on someone else’s hard disk, you’ll never be able to remove it. Pictures and posts are forever, so proceed with caution.

Disable your webcam or any other camera connected to the internet when you aren’t using it. Hackers can get remote access and record you.

Photos and videos of children shared on social media by the adults in their lives sometimes show up on disturbing websites and forums, some dedicated to child pornography. It isn’t uncommon that images that are innocent family activities show up on these horrible websites, putting your grandchildren at risk. The information and photos you post can tell strangers and criminals where your child:

  • lives,
  • plays,
  • practices sports or music,
  • volunteers,
  • catches the bus,
  • goes to church, and
  • goes to school.

Posts with information like location tags and landmarks give strangers as well as known aggressors the ability to locate a child and other family members. This is especially dangerous for families who are trying to manage custody disputes, have high profile jobs in law enforcement, and who are working to escape domestic violence situations.

How to keep your family safe:

  • Check your social media privacy settings. Restrict your posts to ‘friends only’ and make sure that they don’t have the right to re-share the photos.
  • Talk to your close friends and family about privacy so they don’t share your photos with just anyone
  • Check your Friends list and remove people who are not close friends.
  • People you met on vacation who were quite nice, people who are friends of friends, and people you added just to be polite are a security risk when you’re posting photos of your children.
  • Turn off metadata (also known as EXIF data) and geotagging for your photos. That means no one can locate your children using the photo metadata. Or ensure that the platform you are sharing from will strip the EXIF data from your photos. Read more about EXIF data here.
  • Don’t include other data that outsiders could use to identify your kids, such as their full names, date of birth, or the school they attend. Using nicknames or descriptive phrases is a good way to stop someone trawling for identities – “my little Sprout”, “our little Princess”, or “the Incredible Jumping Bean” will stop outsiders.
  • No nude or semi-nude photos should be posted of your kids. If there’s the slightest doubt in your mind about a photo, don’t post it.

You are helping to create your grandchildren’s digital footprint, something that can follow them the rest of their lives in an ever increasingly connected world.