MIL posting personal info about baby on FB

[Foxglove7]

My MIL posts extensively on FB so it's second nature for her to share news about family through her account. When our son was born, she announced the birth via FB hours after I gave birth and while I was still in hospital. We'd shared photos via WhatsApp and she included these even though part of my boob was showing due to skin-to-skin (they were discreet and I was comfortable with family seeing them but not with them being shared with everyone I know!) She tagged both me and my husband so our friends, colleagues and my aunt/cousins found out via this route before we could tell them in person. With hindsight I think I'm entitled to feel pretty upset about this but at the time we were preoccupied adjusting to life as new parents and didn't want a drama, especially as we hadn't been proactive in managing her expectations around social media during the pregnancy. We therefore didn't challenge it though she did sort of apologise to my husband and acknowledge she'd thought that maybe she shouldn't do it but was too excited! My husband and I both have FB accounts but haven't actively used them in years and are quite private people so wouldn't have made our own announcement. During the first few visits she posted a LOT of photos of our son which made us quite uncomfortable. We therefore explained we wanted to keep photos of him off social media and asked her not to post any new photos. A couple of times we've had to ask her to take new images down but she's now much more respectful. However, there are still posts up with our son's first and middle names, DOB, mother's maiden name and name of village where we live. I'm concerned about this from a security perspective and am planning on asking her to remove these even though it's several months after the event. I don't think she gets why we're concerned and thinks we're being paranoid. AIBU? For context she has 500+ FB friends and lax privacy settings. Posts she's tagged us in are shared with a further 400+. If anyone knows of any relevant resources about internet safety we could share I'd be very grateful - most info I've found is aimed at stopping children oversharing, not their Nan!

YANBU. She needs to stop and take the photos and information down. The baby photos can be shared in private family groups.

SM is still a pretty recent thing, and I think that future generations will be shocked at how much we used to share private family photos online. The same way as we look back at parenting from decades ago, and what used to be considered normal and acceptable.

I was guilty of sharing my baby photos in the past, but I have now set all of my albums to private, and no longer share photos of mine or anyone else's dc on SM. I mostly use it for cat pictures now.

Well done for convincing Nan to stop putting photos of the child up on the internet.
Information about the child's birth is no more than what occurs in a public Birth Notice so I would not worry about that; it should now be back in her history line and harder to find in her posts. Only her friends can see it and in years gone by Birth Notices were placed for every child in a public newspaper.

Anonymously report the photos?

Tell her paedophiles use the photos or the babies identity can be stolen - she needs to know it’s unsafe and not just you

Amend your tagging approvals so if you are tagged, you are required to approve (or not) the tag

The birth announcement thing happened to my brother, he was devastated. We don’t have any photos of DS on SM but fortunately none of our parents have FB and neither does DH so it would only be me putting stuff up anyway. You are your DS parents, I’d be telling her to remove everything, tell her you’ve had a change of heart if you don’t want to tell her you’ve always hated it, but she has no right to posting photos of your child. My son is at nursery and the length of the consent forms we’ve had to complete around this is nuts.

Not being rude, but what is it people worry about in this situation? Is it identity theft?

Report the photos to Facebook. They can get them deleted of the account.

This is very naive. Newspapers are much harder to track down years later and piece together for identity theft.

@marseille yes identity theft, plus invasion of privacy is bad for mental health (the film The Circle is an education on this), plus can you imagine applying for a job as a 20 something when your entire life is documented online for future employers to see? I think we owe our children privacy and the right to decide what’s shared in the public domain.

Don’t allow her to take any more photos.

i agree with changing your settings so that you have to confirm being tagged.

Yep, this.
I hate it when people post photos of me without asking. They often mention my name (wish there was a way of blocking that too) but at least no one can tag me.

The birthday thing might be overkill. It'd fairly common for people to post happy 4th birthday to my grandon James today, type things which I'm assuming is what you mean?

Don’t ask her to take the posts down, get your husband to tell her to do this. If she refuses then contact FB who will remove them .

Her plan is obviously to continue posting photos / info about your child and make you plead with her anytime you want then removed . This will make you ( probably just you and not you as a couple ) into the “ unreasonable” one who is “ controlling “.

So you need to reverse this and tell her to stop posting anything about your child without your permission in advance. Stop sending her photos of baby and limit what photos she can take in person.

You need to assume that anything you send her or tell her will end up the internet , so be very very careful. If she shows that she has changed her ways and is willing to respect your views, then you can think about loosening the boundaries a little.

You need to start as you mean to go on, she is clearly a person who has no respect for other people’s boundaries.

My FIL did this too and my DH was really upset. It’s so selfish and thoughtless.

This. Your settings need to be tightened as well

Stop sending her photos and instead show these to her in person.

I totally get where your coming from, I don't post photos of dc's and wouldn't let anyone else post photos of dc's in an, you just don't no what people are doing with those photos and also your child doesn't want them on there, one of my dc's said thank you to me for not posting photos of them, I say this as a parent of older dc's. Ask her not to put any photos or any info on line. If she chooses to after you have asked her not to and explained why, the dangers etc, don't send her any photos or allow her to take photos. Hopefully once she realises you are serious about the situation she will stop doing it.
She is a proud nan which is lovely, she can have photos in her house or even show people photos on her phone. She wants to show off her grandchild which is great she just needs to do it In other ways.