To never send MIL photos again?

[babybrain77]

This is actually a AIBU for DH.

DH feels extremely strongly about photos of the kids on social media. He has worked in cyber security and always knew that he didn't want pictures of his kids online (including shared by non secure message like whatsapp). It's been a pain in the backside, but I have supported him on it - never send pictures around or posted them anywhere. He found a secure messaging app which would allow us to share pictures with family and friends but which did not allow the pictures to be shared or stored. He set this up for anyone who wanted it and we've managed fine for 3 years.

MIL didnt want to use the app. So we have been printing off and giving her pictures of the kids whenever we see her, and also sending regular pictures in the post during lockdown.

DH recently sent a family friend a message congratulating them on the birth of a grandchild. The family friend replied saying thank you and "it has been so lovely watching your kids grow up from afar" (they live in Australia).

DH doesn't have Facebook so I searched for his mum (we aren't Facebook friends - I also don't really use it). His mum has been taking pictures of the hard copy photos we've sent and posting them on Facebook, freely viewable to all (no privacy restrictions). She has uploaded literally hundreds of pictures.

DH has explicitly explained why he doesn't want pictures online to his mum. He confronted her about it and she shrugged and said "I have to be able to show off my grandkids". He is spitting mad and has said he will never give her another picture, to which she has kicked off massively. IHBU?

I don't blame him.

DH also works in the field and there isn't a single picture of our DC (10 and 8) online and/or social media.

Grandparents loathe it but tough.

Just as an aside, it's not just about the danger of sex predators or identifying details.

It's also about the DC right to have their image protected until they can make a decision for themselves.

It's also about the fact that face recognition software will be able to pull those "innocent" potty/bath/Bolognese face and tie them with their adult online footprint one day.

Those that are saying OP's DH is being unreasonable all obviously work in cyber security too and know better than he does?

I love how all the invisible posters on MN think they know what's best 🤣

OP, back your husband 100% and I'll be clearing through my Facebook photos.

Unfortunately reporting to facebook does nothing they just viewed ours and said its ok and to talk to the poster. Mil put a group photo of her grandchildren on her profile pic. Husband, works in IT and we decided to let the child make their own mind up about this when they are older. We wont put any up. We asked her 3 times to take it down and got "only my friends can see it" twice then I asked her and got "i dont know how to take it down" despite changing the photo every month. She wanted to show the world her wondeful grandchildren despite not actually having any contact with ours for about 2 years but along as it made her the doting gran then that's fine

Report every single picture to Facebook and they'll remove them.

@BlondeDogLady

I never understand this. What "bad thing" do you think will happen, because some granny with about 10 friends (who she knows personally), has uploaded some photo's of her Grandkids?

Unless it's fully locked down... Others can access...

Evne if it is locked down.. Can be hacked.

Pictures of cute kids get all sorts of traction on paedo sites...

@Marvellousmadness

Mil is in the wrong Dh is wayyyy 0ver the top

So are you OK with paedophiles jacking off to pictures of your (grand) children ??

As this is the natural consequence of unfettered distribution of child pictures online.

That's the reality.

Look up the CEOPs data

Going against your specific request means she no longer deserves photos. Hate this kind of crap

This is the exact reason i no longer even speak to my mother (amongst various others) Trying to explain I don't want Betty down the roads nephews cousin to have access to images of my kids was apparently too wild a suggestion to understand. A woman who baby sat me when I was three bumped into me once and congratulated me on all my beautiful children and discussed several of my life events with me. I hadn't seen her in 30 years and actually had no idea who she was, I wasn't on Facebook and if I had been I certainly wouldn't have been sharing news of my break ups or my kids illness!!!
The old excuse of 'oh its just mum you know what she's like' just doesn't cut it for me after me explicitly saying several time don't do that and why she still did several times. Drives me insane, like I said not just photos but private news and events publicly posted for all to see. The ex MIL is the same, taken images from Whatsapp and posted them to her public Facebook but I'm not allowed to intervene there apparently
I'm absolutely with hubby on this one and can fully understand why he's so upset. He went to all those lengths to prevent it and she's thrown it in his face

@yourestandingonmyneck it is the issue being discussed, but you obviously don’t understand the problem with sharing pictures online. Like you don’t understand how useless the comparison to car accidents is, and clearly don’t understand sarcasm either to explain that point

I agree with you op. I have a degree in computer science and have studied cyber sec, I don’t have any social media accounts and would not be ok with anyone sharing pictures of my children without consent.

[quote Dguu6u]@yourestandingonmyneck it is the issue being discussed, but you obviously don’t understand the problem with sharing pictures online. Like you don’t understand how useless the comparison to car accidents is, and clearly don’t understand sarcasm either to explain that point[/quote]
No, I don't understand, which is why I asked someone to spell it out to me. Which you still have not done.

Everything in life is a risk. You take a chance when you cross the road or get in a car. You do what you can to mitigate the risk and you risk assess. That's life.

If I don't put a seatbelt on my child there is a chance they will be killed in the event of a crash. That's a fatal consequence and it's therefore a no brainer to do everything I can to ensure their safety. But I do still put them in the car. We don't not travel in cars because there is a risk of a crash.

If I put photos of my children online, fully clothed and with no locations or identifying information, what is the risk to my child?

So far, I can see people saying that the risk is that paedophiles will superimpose their faces onto grotesque pornography. Disgusting, obviously, but in reality, somebody could take a photo of them down the park and do this. What's the difference? Where is the actual harm to my child?

I am asking, as I have previously, for genuine answers, but if the best you can muster is more snippy comments so be it.

@yourestandingonmyneck I’m sorry, why do the people who work in the cyber sec field have to spell is out to you? Are you unable to research this yourself? I generally research things myself and make an informed choice based upon that research not upon what some random person has told me on mumsnet.
There is lots of information regarding cyber sec online.

[quote Justmebeingme245]@yourestandingonmyneck I’m sorry, why do the people who work in the cyber sec field have to spell is out to you? Are you unable to research this yourself? I generally research things myself and make an informed choice based upon that research not upon what some random person has told me on mumsnet.
There is lots of information regarding cyber sec online.[/quote]
Because it's a discussion forum

Yes and the original post has been discussed. It’s not the job of an IT professional to educate you. It’s your decision and responsibility to educate yourself when it comes to the security of your child’s images online and you can post whatever you like.
The OPs decision was that she didn’t want the pictures online and mil ignored their wishes.

Also, I'm not the OP. I'm not asking for advice on anything and won't be making any decisions based upon what people on MN say.

I was joining in the discussion because on the pages and pages of this thread I can see people saying "I work in cyber security and would never put pictures on children online" and in the other camp people saying "I don't understand what harm it is doing to have photos of fully clothed children online" and for some reason nobody is actually saying what these repercussions are.

@Justmebeingme245

Yes and the original post has been discussed. It’s not the job of an IT professional to educate you. It’s your decision and responsibility to educate yourself when it comes to the security of your child’s images online and you can post whatever you like. The OPs decision was that she didn’t want the pictures online and mil ignored their wishes.

Yes, of course it is, I'm not asking for advice on my children or decisions.

I was trying to further a discussion because the repeated responses basically saying "I know why it's so dangerous but I'm not telling you" are getting quite tiresome.

Therefore the people who don't share photos of their children online will continue not to, and the people who do will continue to do so.

Which is fine.

I just don't understand people who contribute to discussion forums but then shut people down for asking questions.

Grandparents loathe it but tough

You seem to really enjoy being able to say.

and for some reason nobody is actually saying what these repercussions

I’ve read about things on the thread that I’d no idea about and I’ve appreciated the very few posts that have explained in minute detail just why people don’t put pictures online.

I really would like to learn more about it but it would have to be at the most basic level.

And that’s minute details as in hardly any explanation.

@dogfishman

cereallover no doubt the back of your son's head is a beautiful thing but I think very occasional pictures of it will be fine :)

I'm adopted and I don't want any biological parents seeing him. They weren't nice to me so I don't want them thinking he's their grandsons when they aren't capable of being a mum or dad :(

Almostmenopausal
This is incorrect. All the data sent/received by WhatsApp is end to end encrypted. Also, the image is no longer stored on the recipient's phone

My photo album contains almost exclusively other peoples WhatsApp photos sent to me. And still happening, can you tell me what I do to stop this cos I have been trying for ages to stop the auto save.

If I put photos of my children online, fully clothed and with no locations or identifying information, what is the risk to my child?

Rather than use a car/ seatbelt analogy, where the risks are clearly known, try a different analogy. As the OP has said, we don't yet fully know the risks from social media and large amounts of data storage because it hasn't been going on for long enough. So I'd think of it more as being like Covid. We don't know how it will mutate or what it will do. So yes, we could let it rage through the population on the grounds that everything is a risk. Or we could at least take measures to control it until we know more.

Plus it comes back to image sharing. Say gran is tech savvy enough to scan photos and share them but not savvy enough to really get what can happen on social media. So she's catfished by the school bully who uses all these photos to torment your kids. Okay, it's not life threatening and plenty worse things happen. When you risk assess it you might think it's low probability and the outcome is relatively unproblematic. But the parents have decided it's quite possible and could be awful. They want their children to have more control over their images, even if it's never going to be complete control. So respect them for that.

I’m not in cyber but I think reasons are
Facebook monetises everything; even if you are sending messages privately it will have access to it and so somewhere on a server exists your child’s face, name, DOB, interests etc and that could be linked to them in future by a variety of means (including facial recognition) and that data sold or used to target them with advertising in future, or indeed hacked
WhatsApp is only as secure as the recipient you’re sending it to; if they save your photos and also download viruses or click clinks or have a public iCloud then your images and possibly data depending on the method used becomes public knowledge- again faces linked to names, birthdays, locations etc

The worst outcome is obviously your child’s image being used for paedophilia; it doesn’t matter what your privacy settings are if you have put them on the internet then they are accessible by people with nefarious intentions. The infamous wonderland paedophile ring had incredible levels of IT skills- if it exists on the internet it can be downloaded.
Even fully clothed children end up on websites for these people to rate their attractiveness and write stories about what they would do to them.
Explicit material tends to be more easily available of children from ethnic minorities, but preference tends to be for white children, so children are photoshopped so your child’s features are transposed onto child abuse photos.
Images can also be used by those cat fishing.
There is the risk of future identity theft; small bits of data taken from multiple sources can be added together so that on their 18th birthday fraudsters already have those details ready to set up credit cards etc.
On a less sinister note, more and more children are suing parents regarding consent to their own image. One could argue it’s unethical to be uploading images and information to the internet regarding a person who cannot consent to it, and indeed may object to it in the future.
Technology is evolving all the time and the uses for the internet become ever more sinister.
It is possible in the future your child could come to create a profile and find it has already linked images and data uploaded by their parents.
There’s even the possibility that if your child goes viral for something (and some memes have arisen from third parties sharing images without consent) then Buzzfeed could still be contacting them 10 years later to do a follow up.

It’s a minefield; enough people upload pictures of their children and I don’t think they are all doomed at all but my strong preference is to keep a child’s online presence minimal to nothing.