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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Daily posts of baby on FB

283 replies

shebird · 22/07/2015 16:46

A family member had a baby 6 months ago. Since the day baby was born she posts at least 3 photos and sometimes videos of baby together with updates on baby's weight, sleep and how much she's has expressed Hmm I thought this might have dwindled out as baby got older but it's not looking likely.

I'm aware that I can hide her posts and I am not having a moan about how annoying I find FB. My concern is for the child's privacy. We are not talking the odd cute photo here, pretty much all of this child's life to date has been documented on FB. Do children not have a right to have everything shared online or AIBU?

OP posts:
rabbitstew · 23/07/2015 22:35

Yes, my blood runs cold at the thought of all the details of a baby's sleep pattern getting into the wrong hands. Shock That baby will never get to be the snoop behind the charter.

EllieFAntspoo · 23/07/2015 22:40

Lol.

Information already available and in use. It's a matter of dotting i's and crossing t's to shore up future prosecutions on the back of the recent court rulings re. GCHQs past behaviour. We have some of the most advanced online surveillance on the planet. There isn't anything those who wish to know, cannot find out, if you convert that information into digital form.

proudmummy2004 · 23/07/2015 22:43

Ellie, I only assume it was Tesco because it was the last transaction on that card, as I remember at the time I was skint so had been unable to use it for at least a week so the minute I got paid, I went straight into Tesco to do much needed shopping! Perhaps it wasn't, the bank did not really get to the bottom of it and it was such a struggle to get the money back, although I did eventually. I did change banks after that although of course it is could easily happen again.

Rabbit .. no words laughing face I cannot do these emojis!

rabbitstew · 23/07/2015 22:43

It's a shame they seem to have so much difficulty sorting the wheat from the chaff then, isn't it?

EllieFAntspoo · 23/07/2015 22:46

At the end of the day we all want to be able to earn a decent living and keep the money we earn. Posting personal info reduces your chances of earning well, and increases the chances of losing it once you've earned it. Twenty years ago people thought it was scandalous that companies might use psychometric tests to determine whether of not you were a potentail employee. Now it is accepted as par for the course. To believe the world stops turning as it is today, and employment selection does not move on is naive. Who among us can say for certain that they know what the employment criteria will be for their child in 20 years time?

Lioninthesun · 23/07/2015 22:49

So this debate is all rather pointless - they have the info, we can't protect it so it could come out regardless of whether we share info on the web.

proudmummy2004 · 23/07/2015 22:51

good point lioninthesun

rabbitstew · 23/07/2015 22:51

Ah, but did they know about the 6oz you expressed last night before you told them, eh, Lioninthesun? Wink

Lioninthesun · 23/07/2015 22:52

I don't see how posting pics of your kids in the park is going to affect their future career choices. I don't intend to be doing pics of dd so frequently when she is at school, and less so when she is a teen. I can then teach her safety on the net, as will the schools, however we cannot then control what they do on their own. To think that something parents post could come back on the child 18 years later is a little excitable, no?

EllieFAntspoo · 23/07/2015 23:01

I only assume it was Tesco because it was the last transaction on that card, as I remember at the time I was skint so had been unable to use it for at least a week so the minute I got paid, I went straight into Tesco to do much needed shopping!

Okay, playing devils advocate here, if I had a clone of your card and video of you entering your PIN to check your bank balance, I too would check you bank balance at regular intervals, and as soon as your pay went in, I'd go on a spending spree.

I'd suggest it far more likely that the culprit knew your PIN and had copied the magnetic strip or chip on your card while it was out of your possession and out of site at some point, or when it was passing through the card reader on a cashpoint.

Your bank would have been able to tell you how many times and when the balance were checked prior to the fraudulent transactions. And they would have been able to tell you if the PIN were used to authorise the transaction. But they have a vested interest in concealing how insecure plastic cards are, so you'd have had to push for real information.

Plastic cards are incredibly vulnerable, and the new 'contactless' cards actively broadcast your account information to devices in their vicinity when induced to do so. So if I saw you enter your pin, I could read your account information off your card by passing you in the street, and your bank would blame you, because they need to conceal these vulnerabilities from the public and protect themselves from having to shoulder the losses.

People need to protect themselves, but I find most people just think, "Ah, couldn't happen to me."

EllieFAntspoo · 23/07/2015 23:04

So this debate is all rather pointless - they have the info, we can't protect it so it could come out regardless of whether we share info on the web.

No, the point is to protect your child from all those who may wish to use his personal information. There is FA any of us can do the protect ourselves from our Govt.

proudmummy2004 · 23/07/2015 23:10

I think the original post has somehow got lost off here shocked face

Ellie thank you, that is definitely a different insight. Are you sure you don't work for MI5 or something??

Short of receiving my wages as cash, having no bank account or cards, and stashing my cash in a mattress...I guess I'll have to take the chance with my debit card.

EllieFAntspoo · 23/07/2015 23:12

Lionin There is a difference between a few pictures of DC in the park, and a few pictures a day on a daily basis feeding the world DCs birthday, place of birth, granny's surname, etc. It is surprisingly easy to get someone's DoB, Place of Birth, Mothers Maiden Name etc. from social media, and if they could find out your address, you'd be surprised what you can do with those four bits of information and a telephone.

Personally, I couldn't remember that information for twenty years, so reading it is irrelevant. But a computer can remember that information forever, and the parent who posted it probably wouldn't even remember putting it online.

EllieFAntspoo · 23/07/2015 23:18

Are you sure you don't work for MI5 or something?

I'm sure such people have no interest in us plebs, although I doubt anything posted on here every gets properly deleted.

Cash will be banned at some point in the future. You will see an increase in people telling us they need to ban cash altogether for this reason or that. But we need to stop people from being able to take money out of the banking system. So long as you use a plastic card, the money just moves from one account to another and everyone knows where it is.

proudmummy2004 · 23/07/2015 23:20

If not cash or cards how would we buy stuff? Gosh this is endless and leads to many questions! I think my head is going to explode as it is x

Lioninthesun · 23/07/2015 23:20

OK - I do get your point about not overtly typing in their birthday and home address - one of the reasons FB has annoyed me recently was making me change back to my 'real name' which in itself is quite possibly making my security harder to keep hold of. I've locked down the account to friends only etc but realise people can still screen shot and send on. However I am careful not to take pics of my house, mention my road, I have no faces on cover pics or profile pics and have taken off my birthday and contact info. When they made me do that it really was 50/50 leave FB and cut out over half of my friends and family who live overseas, or stick with it, make sure I know all of my friends properly and trust that they wouldn't sell us out. I can't live in fear of other people, especially those I deem to be my friends.

However, assuming dd is going to be hugely famous and a global star; everyone will know her b.day anyway, they will also know my name, where she grew up, schools she attended and probably get friends to sell pics of her eating a spider or whatever to the national press.

So I don't really get why only 9-5 workers don't need to be worried? I hope she doesn't join M15 but then she'd have a new ID and unless she hides in the local park one day and is hunted down by another spy (ooh it's quite exciting this!) then I still don't see why any of that information would be a problem for her?

Lioninthesun · 23/07/2015 23:25

I also think they are going to stop security questions soon - it's always the same 5 questions to answer and as you say all you need is one or two of those and you can get into anything. It's very outdated, but no idea what the next step is other than these excessively long passwords and fingerprint/iris scanning!

SevenAteNine · 24/07/2015 06:37

The problem, as I see it, with Facebook, is that the ground shifts. It's not in their interests to have information they aren't allowed to use.

You set something to be shared between just you and your friends, some new kind of functionality comes along or you change your settings for something else, and then it's all public. It's happened to me.

On a technical note, Facebook have in the past said it's not actually possible for them to guarantee they have deleted your data if you delete your account.

Accepting that anything you post on the Internet can be misused is the only sensible way to treat it, although it does make things inconvenient.

UngratefulMoo · 24/07/2015 07:34

I am pro-caution when it comes to privacy, but for what it's worth, Facebook does not own your content. Their terms specifically say that YOU own all your content. Yes, they give themselves licence to use your photos and videos, but only in accordance with your privacy settings and only until you delete your account.

I realise that no you can't be confident that anything online is ever deleted, but I just wanted to get clear on that point, as quite a few people on this thread have made various untrue claims about this.

sticklebrickstickle · 24/07/2015 07:55

I would love it if Facebook would have existed for my parents to share my babyhood. As it is they hardly bothered with photos and I don't really have a record of me as a baby/child.

I would be fascinated to look through what my parents may have posted and to have a record of what my daily life was like at a time I have no memory of. I often wonder what kind of parents to me my parents were in those early months and years.

I think today's babies are lucky their early lives won't be such a mystery!

rabbitstew · 24/07/2015 08:09

Anyone relying on the dates of birth and other details on Facebook is taking a risk - not everyone tells the truth on social media. You can create a whole imaginary self on there if you want and make "friends" with people who don't even know you (some people really aren't fussy who they are "friends" with). You don't have to post photos of yourself on it, you can use photos of other people. If you want to steal peoples' accurate personal information, it's better to hack into the website of an organisation that has your credit card or banking details, or healthcare information, or National Insurance number, etc... Or to get access to a more private forum, where people think they are more secure.

shebird · 24/07/2015 08:25

I know someone who's profile pic was used by someone else on a dating websiteShock

OP posts:
Kizzy07 · 24/07/2015 08:54

I blog about my family life. Photos of my children are online for all to see, along with information about what we have been up to. I am careful about not putting any information on there that may compromise our safety either on or offline, but I appreciate that people may be able to work out some personal details if they really wanted to. I write about parenting and sometimes embarressing things my kids have done but nothing too serious that would traumatise them in the future. If there comes a point when my children are older that they no longer want me to write about them then I will respect that. Right now what I do is no different to thousands of other bloggers and millions of Facebook users and you very rarely hear of negative consequences of this. Sure it does happen, I am not naive, but there are worse things happening out there.

Miggsie · 24/07/2015 10:22

I'm a very private person, fairly introverted and don't do Facebook.
If my mother had posted every little thing about me as a child to the entire world I'd be cringing with embarrassment. And I wouldn't be able to do one thing about it.

I'm also one of those people who screens CVs using online searches. If the profile is covered with photos of them getting pissed or masses of baby photos I'd think "unreliable and likely immature".
It will affect your future life. My DD has no internet presence at all, and it's staying that way.

DH belongs to one facebook group - we are inundated with emails from "MyLife" saying various people really want to get in touch with him - it's all scam style stuff too. Personal data flies round the internet for ever.

Ilovecrapcrafts · 24/07/2015 11:10

I agree with a lot of this but do believe that whilst employers check FB very few back in to look at private stuff. Even fewer check employees parents.

It astonishes me that so many people don't have private FB but it's common sense to lock it down.
Of course the real worry is FB changing it's privacy policy and making previously private stuff public