AIBU to remind you to be careful with "first day" photos?

[AChickenCalledDaal]

Just seen a friend's "first day at secondary school" photo online. Two happy children, in recognisable school uniform, next to a clearly readable little sign that displays their very distinctive house name and the street number.

AIBU to remind people that there's little point nagging their teenagers about internet safety, if their parents don't follow simple precautions themselves?

Profile pics (so always open) are often of the kids.

Profile pics are set as public as the default, but you can change the privacy settings (I have a non-identifiable profile photo at present but the previous one which was of my face is set to friends only) .

“When I asked ro write it down I got a terse "and if I type it out wrong, then what you going to do".

I think that’s mad, they are more likely to get it wrong with it being said! But this annoys me too. Same in local pharmacy or anywhere else.

School used a photo of my son in a start of year talk . They hadn’t asked. I was surprised when he popped up on the screen! It was to show Summer uniform bits and pieces. They had another child showing winter uniform and another in games kit. It must have been taken last year sometime.

I didn’t mind particularly except the woman sitting next to me said “He looks cheeky!” She did have the grace to blush when I said “That’s my son!”

I have never ever posted pictures of my DCs on social media, and never will.

I really don’t get this “First day at school!” nonsense. Surely this could be shared on a private WhatsApp group?

Ah, but then you might not get the sheer deluge of “Aw gorgeous angel xx” comments listed directly underneath the photo itself for all to see in perpetuity

YANBU at all OP. I don’t get this.

Ah the “I’m so over social media so I’m sooooo much better than you” posts are as much a tradition in September as the back to school photos

Whatever it takes to make you feel your parenting better

*is better

Not so much from pov of a paedophile but from identity theft

Birth certificates area matter of public record. I could look up and obtain yours with no questions asked.

The police do this when creating profiles for under cover officers www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/feb/03/police-spies-identities-dead-children

Britain's largest police force stole the identities of an estimated 80 dead children and issued fake passports in their names for use by undercover police officers.

The Metropolitan police secretly authorised the practice for covert officers infiltrating protest groups without consulting or informing the children's parents.

Yes yabu @AChickenCalledDaal you're paranoid.

I agree but then I am very cautious because of the risk of someone I know, not a stranger.
I am very cautious about safety in general. I think people think it won't happen to them and you know what, it probably won't, but is it worth the risk?
However, if your account is locked to just your friends who know where you live and where your kids go anyway, then I don't see a problem.

Very interesting range of views. To answer a few specific points:

It was the combination of the house address, children's names and school uniform which I thought was unwise, not the uniform in isolation

There are a few specific scenarios that come to mind where this could be a risk. They include the empty house being targeted during the school holidays - as it happens the same family are keen on publishing holiday photos in real time, so that's an obvious one.

Grooming is a long, slow process of piecing together information. Why put the information out there on a plate?

The account holder has several hundred "friends" so I disagree that there is any likelihood that access is carefully locked down.

Mostly though it's just the double standards that I wanted to highlight. There are good reasons why we tell our children to avoid putting their full name and address online. But then careless parents out the same information out there without a second thought.

As someone has said up thread, no-one really thinks the risks are genuine till something happens.

And perhaps you could grant someone the intelligence of weighing up the risks and coming to a different conclusion to you.

I only post pictures of my son on my private instagram account if his face is obscured, I wouldn’t post a picture that identified his school in anyway.

If he wasn’t adopted I wouldn’t be as careful.

And perhaps you could grant someone the intelligence of weighing up the risks and coming to a different conclusion to you.

Absolutely fine. As long as that's what they've done.

Hysterical nonsense

Agree with you OP. So easy to piece info together from social media. We need to protect our personal information. And as parents, be good role models for our kids when it comes to being safe online.

I work at a local newspaper. New school starter photos issue is our biggest of the year by a country mile. If we don’t go to a specific school, parents ring us up and kick off. People love it. It’s nice to be able to look back at the photo in 20 years and know who everyone is.

I spend every day in court and have done for nearly 20 years. Guess how many cases I’ve covered where some evil person has targeted a child because their face has appeared in the paper or on FB? Not a single one. Neither has any journalist colleague of mine around the country and I know a lot of court reporters.

So I totally understand if people don’t want to put their children’s pics online. Crack on. But the risk here of anything sinister happening is virtually zero.

You're all people who won't answer a phone unless you 100% know who's on the other end, aren't you?

I've known of so many grooming cases where.....

Really?

I'm in my late 50s and 'know' of none.

Vigilance yes, but perspective also.

@Lucie8881 I wish it was hysterical nonsense. It isn't.
Parents are the worst offenders for failing to secure their personal social media accounts , regularly location tag their children, provide full names, dates of birth, other social media details, addresses, car rego's you name it via public accounts. All it takes is one or two parents with dubious account security using school social media to unravel most of the class lists at a school, and identify all the families.
A newspaper publishing such images and names re ' back to school" provides all the details necessary to cross reference multiple social media platforms to find that particular child.

Paedophiles DO stalk school school social media, and school location tags on Instagram. They DO groom children who are too young to be using social media, heck - they groom older ones too.

Images of school children taken from public posts of especially primary age children DO turn up in paedophile libraries . Predators share online images. Parents often provide a child's social media address which can lead to a teen being pursued online.

Why, may I ask- do you view this as hysterical nonsense?

janicebattersby how many schools would the newspaper cover? How many photos? I still can’t quite get my head round this. Surely there would be thousands of photos? My local paper covers an area with 60 primary schools, all of which are two or three form entry.

They photograph the whole class as a group @daisypond!

Oh, I see. But how many schools, roughly?

Class photos in the local paper has been normal in Scotland for donkeys years.
Our local paper has a pull out section every year of all the local primary schools. It's all village schools some with 5 pupils some 20. The paper covers about 8 primary schools.
Parents have been buying these photos for years.

Class photos in the local newspaper are also normal around here. It's in a special colour supplement. But they don't list the names of the children.

They don't list names here either.