A Little Rant about parents that share too much information online.

[cpd2009]

I have a Flickr account. Flickr is a place where people can share pictures and it was quite popular before the age of Facebook and Instagram. I have had an account there for nearly 10 years now and seen many things there, both good and bad. This is sort of a bad experience that ties into people sharing far too much information through online photo albums.

Every now and then, I come across this one particular Flickr user. I won't name names or link it here, but it's an account run by a family in the southern United States. This family documents their entire lives in this account including their own children, going on trips and documenting family events. That seems normal, until you find out that they end up sharing family moments that are best left as private images or not uploaded at all. Said images were taken during their kids bath time. They aren't illegal images and are just innocent pictures documenting that family's life. Even so, these are pictures that they should have AT LEAST been uploaded as private. They chose to upload them as public instead, and this is where it starts getting downright creepy.

I only came across these images when I wanted to take a look at this family's "About" page, where Flickr users can write some text introducing themselves and all that. The "About" page contains a gallery of said users most popular pictures, sorted by either the most "Faved" or most commented. Guess which pictures got the most faves?

Yeah... the bath pictures ended up being on their most popular list because sick perverts faved them the most. And this family doesn't seem to realize that their innocent pictures are being used in this manner.

I'm kind of at a loss of words on what to say here other than... I was genuinely creeped out by the entire thing. I will state that these images aren't pornographic at all. It's just bath time pictures that this particular family should have thought twice about uploading into a public space. I'm grossed out by the fact they did this for many reasons, and I'm sickened by the fact that perverts ended up creating an unintentional gallery of their sick desire on a family's Flickr About page due to how the site sorts out the most popular photos on any given account.

I don't know how to go forward with this. Something obviously needs to be done to let this family know that they should NOT be uploading their kids' bath time pictures as a public photo, but rather as private. If they would have done that, then these pervs wouldn't have done what they did to make this family's About page so damn scary.

[huckleberrypie]

Which is why handing over a tablet to a kid without any sort of discretion is also wrong on so many levels. I've had my nephew's Facebook profile taken down for "stranger danger" reasons, most especially as he is deaf/mute and more or less vulnerable.

The family should know better even though the pictures in question are taken a decade ago, well since the persons affected could in some way be the butt of humiliation through them creeps.