The whole idea of ID theft is far more risky for the hacker
Not really. His end is far more anonymous than yours.
... but then everything is replaced, my credit score is back to normal - no more problems.
More like six months, and during that time you're fucked if you want to do anything involving new credit agreements (move house, etc). Credit reference agencies also continue to flag up compromised identities forever. They are already known to be susceptible to fraud.
If dd doesn't get a job because I posted a pic of her in a bear costume when she was 3, then I would be rather relieved.
It is easy to frame OPs question and concern as posting a couple of pictures online. The concern is one of cataloging from birth, three pictures a day along with a diatribe. I would be surprised if her date of birth, name and place of birth were not already online for all to see, linked conveniently to her mother and grandmother, in all likelihood giving maiden name. I'd bet we could track down home twin and a 192 search would give us address and telephone number, and I'd guess she's not removed herself from the public electoral role, so we can corroborate the information. Maybe two moths into the world and we could find out more personal information about her child that we could find out about your average MN poster.
I may not be here in 20 years, I more than likely won't be here in 40. But all that child's personal information is already online, is in all likelihood already catalogued by a dozen or more servers around the world, and once added to a frauds terms information database of 'potential clients' will be there forever. As that child grows, and more information is collated with the records they already possess, a point in time comes when they become a viable target.
If they don't want to use her CV and see what she has actually achieved rather than what she may or may not like to do in her spare time, then more fool them.
Of, if you don't want to see her CV and read what she has said she has achieved.... The CV is the first chance a prospective employee has to 'sell themselves' to an employer. And like all selling, it is a dance if half truths and exaggeration, at best, and in some cases I have been presented with, a list of lies and omissions.
The whole idea is farcical.
I agree. That just happens to be the way the world works. With more than a thousand applications from 'qualified' people for every job offered at my last employer, we had to find ways of screening out the undesirables. At the first round of interviews we gave them a form to fill out while they were waiting, primarily to see what their handwriting was like, to see if they tripped themselves up, and as a social test. The person giving them the form would mark it A, B or C in the top right hand corner just to indicate his/her first impression of the candidate. They also underwent a credit reference check, a background check, a voluntary drugs test (voluntary, as in, if you don't take it, and you don't pass, you don't get a job), a compulsory medical, telephoning of references, professional and personal, and a psychometric test. Social background reports (including online footprint) were being evaluated when I left the business, and I understand they are now quite widely used throughout the City. It helps ensure staff are not susceptible to pressure from outside sources, and it gives you a window on their motivations and their likely personal behaviour whilst in your employment.
If you're one in a thousand going for a job at KwikMart, and your competition is illiterate, you have little to worry about, and your social footprint may well be a bonus. It proves you can speak legibly and are liked. If however you are one in a thousand university applicants wanting to work in London's Square Mile, and Daddy doesn't already smoke cigars with the CEO, a clean social background one less stumbling block.
Of course, you have to have the first in the first place. If you're only ever destined to work in retail banking, no amount of nepotism or social chastity will keep you in the City longer than it takes you to be found out. So, in that regard, I imagine abstaining from social media, outside of the basic security concerns, is moot. For most, their social presence is an irrelevance to their employer at present.
Let's hope it stays that way. I however, will give my children the option of having as clean a profile as I can maintain for them, and then let them do with that as they please when they are older. I'm lucky enough to be able to show them what social profiles can contain, and how that information is perceived. Not by KwikMart of course. They couldn't give a F.