AIBU to ask my mum to stop WhatsApping baby photos?

This really is OTT and no way to live.

I work in Safeguarding and have direct involvement in some of the concerns you are talking about.

Ultimately, it’s your child your rules but refusing to send an image over WhatsApp to family is not how me or most of my colleagues choose to live and it’s not lack of awareness. It’s assessing risk versus family life.

OP, as a DGM, I share photos of my DGC with my sisters and a couple of close friends - in all reasonableness, most people won’t be interested in a random baby picture. I really think you’re over-reacting here. There’s a massive difference between sharing with a couple of friends, and putting it on Facebook or elsewhere online.

It's nothing to do with not understanding safeguarding, I work in CP and still think you're being ridiculous.
It's a photo shared privately with a relative.
Your child will end up in thousands of digital images, are you going to prevent them attending school, no days out, no holidays. While I do understand the concern, you need to balance that with probability because there is no way to completely eliminate risk.

It is completely your right to withdraw photos.

But honestly, I think people get far to worked up over this. There is a big difference between privately sending people photos online, and publicly posting photos online.

a grandmother sending a picture digitally to another old lady, isn't highly highly unlikely to cause any more harm than her printing a photo and posting it to the other lady.

Ok Meta, has your picture. Great, they have billions of pictures, nothing will come of it.

Predators aren't going through private messages either, they look for public posts to steal from. Open facebook posts, instagram posts.. there are so many public images, they don't need to hack your grandma's friends account to steal a picture in a private message.

So yes, you are in your right to do it.. and yes you are avoiding a risk by doing so.... but no (unless they are being posted publicly) the risk is not actually that significant, and in reality you probably have more of a risk of your child being photographed in public (which you have no legal ability to control) than this causing an issue...

Don't take part in any baby shows or local fetes then. Local papers are full of baby pics

Agree .

I'm with you op. The thing is, her friends might be harmless but your don't know who they might be forwarding your baby pictures to. I sent a picture of my baby to my great aunt and then she (mistakenly, I assume) set this photo as a WhatsApp status, therefore all of her contacts could see (and save) my baby's picture. It made me uncomfortable.
Once you send a picture, you lose control of what happens with it.

Exactly. Only on Mumsnet, I tell you 🙄

What exactly is your fear? That your dc will get kidnapped or something? You obviously have high anxiety and this isn't normal. There are influencers out there sharing their dc with millions! I think your Mums friends are fairly safe. When your dc starts school, clubs etc are you going to be the odd parent who won't allow a photo?

The new grandmother is excited, proud and just wants to join in with the hype. OP is putting a dampener on her excitement for no rational reason. All babies look the same. It’s a rather sad way some new parents use to distance the rest of the family. See also not wanting to see family on Christmas Day, and not letting people see the new baby. And then they inevitably complain that the distance they’ve created means no family members want to babysit their child. You reap what you sew.

I’m not the OP, but I don’t want my baby’s photos shared with random distant relatives we never see regardless if it’s WhatsApp, email, text, sent in the post. I can’t articulate why exactly it makes me feel uncomfortable, but I don’t want strangers being sent my baby’s picture. I’m talking a level of distance where MIL could send a random stock photo of a couple and baby and they wouldn’t notice. I can’t imagine why my MIL thinks that second cousin David who doesn’t know DH or I from Adam would want a picture of our baby. And I also feel uncomfortable being forwarded on baby pictures to us because I’ve always imagined the children’s parents would feel how we did if they knew their child’s picture was being sent to strangers, and I have literally nothing to say when sent a photo of a totally random child.

I am a little confused by this as I didn’t think WhatsApp was social media.

would you be ok with her emailing the pictures to great aunt Emily or do you just not want them shown to anyone at all?

WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption. At the end of the day, you an do what you want and ask for what you want, but it's still OTT.

I don’t think this is about sharing a photo, this is about the advances of AI and hacking. Do you fully 100% trust all these people with your children and their images.

Total Estimated Volume: A 2023 analysis, indicating the scale of the problem, suggested an estimated 3.18 million non-consensual intimate images (NCII) are generated per year in the UK.

While a lot of people think but a picture of a baby isn’t sexual. You would Be surprised about kinks, what’s these people find attractive and what they can do with AI. Post a picture of your child at the beach or in the garden blowing bubbles or a new born with it’s mouth open…..all of these can be edited and sold to hundreds or thousands of people.

So yes it may seem very over the top but once you learn that 1% of the total population in the USA has accessed or distributed child imaged in the past year it becomes a bit more worrying. The world is changing and while it seems innocent parents need to be aware if how their children’s images are shared and stored

It’s a bit ott but I can understand it
accounts can be hacked and pictures used for other things
i wouldn’t put my gs photos anywhere because I’ve been asked not to, it’s the parents right

I’m with you OP! I hate the idea of people I barely know (or don’t even know) have photos of my child. I don’t have a solution for you, but I can tell you that some people have absolutely no respect for other people’s privacy. My cousin doesn’t want pics of his child to circulate, so he sends them to his mum (my aunt) using the view-once option in WhatsApp… she has subverted this by opening the photo and taking a photograph of the screen with another phone. She then sends it on to whoever she wants. It is infuriating and she wonders why she doesn’t have a good relationship with her son.

I wouldn't see WhatsApp as being social media, I would see it as being the same as email, or Messenger - or post, if we are going way back!

Tell me you just had your first baby without telling me you just had your first baby 🤣

the person probably glances at the photo and then completely forgets it.. you are being ridiculous..

My MIL does this with random distant relatives and I haven’t said anything but I don’t like it. I also have no idea why these people would want or need a photo of my baby. I haven’t met some of them, and of the ones I have met the most recent time was the best part of ten years ago and I wouldn’t recognise them if I I walked past them on the street. She could send pictures of random babies from Google images and it would have the same effect. She also sends us photos of the children and grandchildren of said random distant relatives and I never know how to respond, because I really don’t care about pictures of strangers’ children.

I think that's OTT, she's excited. It's not on FB, it will calm down, and people won't be interested in a few months; the baby won't even look like that by summer. Really not worth bad blood, especially if you may want some childcare in the future.

What distinguishing features does your baby have? They all look the bloody same!

There are some extraordinarily precious people about these days. So much is over-dramatised.

If people see a photo of your baby NOTHING'S GOING TO HAPPEN.

Maybe OP is going to do that thing Victoria Beckham did and copyright the family’s image?

This is insane