Privacy

Privacy, privacy, privacy. Such a hard thing to really be serious about, especially when you have a blog. Even more so when you have these social networking sites, that make it “oh so easy” to share with friends and family (and the rest of the world).

Last year I found that some old, creepy man, had tagged himself in pictures of my daughter on Facebook. That’s when I started really looking into the privacy setting for EVERYTHING. Blogging, Social Networking sites, and even applications. This is the reason I have right-click disable. Now, I know there are some sick people out there, and some that even just steal things for fun. So, I disabled the links that way no one could click through on any images of my daughter. I’m sure some genius out there can get around the disabled right-click but it makes it that much more of a task for them. Then, I started to watermark all of my pictures. But, I knew that if someone out there really wanted to, they could figure out a way to steal them and to remove the watermark. But I felt as if I had taken all the measure I could with the knowledge that I had to keep them from being taken.

Then after some “identity theft” happened with the Sartin’s my husband and I really started discussing about how much I should be posting and sharing in general. Down came a lot of pictures on Facebook. Then, I stopped posting as many pictures on this blog as well as my other blog (meant for family only). I still wanted to keep this blog up and just post a few pictures here and there. My daughter is my joy, and this blog is a way for me to share that with you, and as a way to document her life. I plan to print out this blog and have it made into a journal. But now blogger has this new “Lightbox” feature that lets you view pictures from someone’s posts. This wouldn't have been so bad if they had left the image URL hidden. But no, that’s not the case. So now anyone that views ANY image of mine can click on the link, and then right-click to save my picture. This is not something I signed up for. There is no way to disable this feature either so I’m in a bit of a pickle.

I really hate being so paranoid and I don’t care if some steals a picture of me because I’m nothing special. Hubba, hubba. But my daughter is my daughter. I don’t need some bored teenager trying to play off that she’s theirs. I don’t want some sick pervert to come across the images and save them. And lastly, I don’t want Emery to be forced into being thrown out into the internet. She doesn’t have her own choices yet and I as her mother really need to do my best to protect her. So I have decided that if I post pictures of her, they will not show her face. I don't know if I'll be taking down any of the previous pictures or just replacing them with others. But, I feel like this is a good thing to do in order to protect my little one. Plus, the risk that comes with doing nothing at all is just not worth it me. I'd rather try to be more private than throw everything out there when it comes to her.