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German Police Warn Parents To Stop Posting Photos of Kids On Facebook (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A post on Facebook by German police advising parents not to post pictures of their children on the social media site has been shared more than 100,000 times and viewed by over seven million people. The Hagen Police left its warnings about paedophile interest with the suggestion that kids might not appreciate the early publicity after they have grown up a little.
What if my children are ugly? Is it okay then?
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Those school pics you were forced to get every year? Ya, big pedophile ring right there. Forcing us to look nice for photos, so they could get off on it.
What about the DMV taking pictures of your kids? Government controlled ephebophilia ring there.
Oh shit, about what all the kids at the beaches? Wearing very little? We should outlaw that also. Maybe not let kids go outside anymore while we are at it. After all, we just think of the children, oh wait, we should outlaw that also.
Be seeing you...
I knew some idiot who doesn't know the difference between "getting a photograph" and "posting the photograph on Facebook" would say something stupid like that.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Sudden breakout of common sense. It's the exact same thought I had when watching "David After Dentist" on YT.
Imagine him at 15, scared and asking a girl on a date, and her asking him if he's been to the dentist lately.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Be afraid, be VERY afraid!
Pedophiles are everywhere, under your BED, in the CLOSET, in your SCHOOLS, hiding behind TREES, at the SUPERMARKET!!!
They're at the AUTO DEALER, they're in the POOL, they're climbing MOUNTAINS, be AFRAID!!! Everyone you know is SECRETLY a pedophile or a satanist or BOTH!! AAAAHH!!!
Be afraid of everyone everywhere all the time!!
OoooOOooooh scary!!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
If some creeper gets the photo and photoshops it into something horrible, I may get mixed up in something that will ruin me.
What if they take a photo of an adult that you've shot pics of (or a pic of you) and photoshops it into something horrible, perhaps involving children?
The chances of that happening are very, very small, but there's nothing really to be gained from allowing photos of adults to be misused in some nefarious way. Obviously I'm taking this to an extreme silliness, but how is it different?
Maybe one of your pictures gets used in a frame-up or photoshopped into child porn or something that looks really incriminating...at what point do we all just say this is paranoia running wild?
The fact is that anyone that wants pictures of kids will have no trouble finding them on the web, so I think that boat has already sailed.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I say this as the father of two little girls. But if I post pictures on facebook of my daughters they are photos that I have deemed OK for public consumption. They are photos that if they were published on the front page of a news paper I would be absolutely fine about it. So given that, why should I care if someone with a perversion finds one of them titillating? Yeah it's definitely pretty high on the gross out scale but maybe I shouldn't post pictures of my cat then for a similar reason?
This is a totally totally stupid suggestion. If someone does collect photos of kids off the internet from facebook NO CHILD IS HARMED. Stupid.
...not strangers. Why? Because they have extended unsupervised access. The idea that roving bands of pedos are parachuting in from the hills is ridiculous.
I just read the original post by the Polizei Hagen and the context is not so much about pedophiles but the emphasis is more on basic privacy concerns... A quick and dirty translation (usual caveats apply):
Please stop posting photographs of your children for all to see on Facebook and Co! - Even your children have privacy!
A snapshot naked on the beach or bathing in the pool: Many of you publish pictures of their little ones on Facebook and Co. And very often those are visible to everyone, without any appropriate safeguards in the privacy settings. Maybe you consider the pictures adorable today, but they might prove endlessly embarrassing for your children in a few years - or they might even get bullied! Even worse: pedophile inclined people may use such photos for their own purposes or publish them elsewhere. Your children have a right of privacy. We feel that pictures of children should not be published in social networks. Because the Internet never "forgets" anything. View your pictures of your little ones wtih grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, friends and acquaintances rather personally. Because: Isn't it so much nicer to talk and smile about them together?
Thank you!
Your Police Hagen
To make it short. They warn about giving the really bad guys an easy way to get a photo and enough data to locate the kids. Some people even post their kids schedule.
Complete and utter FUD. Has there EVER been a case where a non-family member kidnaps a specific kid based on stuff they found online? If you want to kidnap a kid, you already know where they hang out. First off, kidnapping by a complete stranger is extremely extremely rare and secondly the person who is going to do this is going to go where the kids are and grab the first kid they find, they aren't going to try to get a specific kid. Now posting when your kid is home alone is probably not the smartest thing to do so I would venture to say that posting your own work schedule or whereabouts would be more dangerous than posting a picture of your kid or your kid's schedule. Lastly, so they have your kid's picture, who cares? They can get millions of pictures on google by googling "kid". That's not the kind of pictures they are wanting and in no way does it make your kid any more at risk. The only thing it could possibly do is allow a kidnapper to put a name to a face so they can call the kid by name but that can be done by listening to the kids play for 5 minutes and abducting kids is disgustingly easy. Show up with a cute dog and you can have your pick of any kid on the playground. It just doesn't happen.