You are a bad parent...

[tinymango]

Parents who upload photographs of their children to Facebook without first ensuring the account is private and secure are not good parents.

Someone with average skills could geotag a photo of your child. Guess what school they go to. Get your name off Facebook along with your email and mobile number. Trace relatives and addresses and easily go in and take your child out of school or nursery with ease whilst they pretend to be someone else.

If you have photographs you want to share use an encrypted whatsapp group or via a private account.

Uploading photos of your child to share with relatives is not a good excuse. Or even as a way to archive photos. You are putting your child at risk.

Please do not be clueless.

You poor sad person to live in fear of something so incredibly unlikely. YABU.

*you’re

My school refused to hand my child over to my mother, who they've met on several occasions, is down as her emergency contact and who the 10 year old in question can identify without first speaking to me for an urgent GP visit. I doubt they'd let some random dude from Facebook pick her up.

If your child's school allows strangers to walk in and collect them without prior arrangement then I'd get on to the LEA.

Our children are adopted so I have a slightly different view of this. Because they came from an abusive situation where it certainly wouldn't be good if their BF found them then we have done things to protect them. But I must say that I think that the idea that some stranger is going to go to all that effort to kidnap a random child a bit more than far fetched. I think that parents who have no real good reason to have extra high security are just making it more difficult for these that really do need it. For instance the 'no photos' at the school play thing is not understood by so many because of so many parents spoiling it for the few that really need it. I have a friend who wouldn't let her teens go to the play park down the road without an adult! Our son will go on a 50 mile bike ride on his own and can take the train into the city at 14. He is now very street wise and independent.

Yup- but bad parent is a bit strong.. Anyone with a public social media account, particularly one without the location services turned off is foolish unless they are a business. Public accounts betray a disturbing amount of information, useful not only to predators but identity thieves, scammers etc.
There is the option to tailor your photo posts on most of the main social media accounts to limit the audience who is allowed to view what you post.
The thing that icks me out is the thought that a predator may find your child attractive and save the images to their library for later viewing. This happens. Alot.

Snort. I worked in the field of child online protection for years and this is ludicrous. Yes, keep settings private, don’t post pics you wouldn’t want strangers to steal for nefarious purposes - all good. But those pesky child abductors aren’t hunting down your child to snatch him, they are opportunistic and also incredibly rare. Hysterical overreactions just feeds misunderstanding and ignorance of the very real, everyday risks children actually face online daily in terms of abuse, danger and damage which can be mitigated with education, communication and understanding the issues.

Bad parent really??

Never in a million years would we let a child go with someone we don’t know. If someone is picking a child up that we haven’t seen before the parents have to give us their full name so we know who to expect, they have to have the ‘password’ which is set up between the parents and us and they also have to give the child’s date of birth. Without all of this they don’t even step foot inside the building.

No school or nursery I have ever come across have handed over a child without express permission from the parent (letter handed in in advance by parent). For emergencies you have a list of trusted adults who can be asked to collect the child.

Even if you wanted to trust to passwords the school would not allow it.

There is absolutely no evidence that child abduction is any more common now than it was 50 or 100 years ago.

Passwords in this house too, we also tell dd9 a password for when she's out playing or for outside school as shes old enough to walk home, so if in a emergency someone else has to pick her up she knows, & again we change it each time its been used only twice so far

I place tons of emphasis on 'stranger danger'.
Why on earth would you do that? The biggest risk to children is from people they know. You hypothetical scare story is so rare as to be unheard of whereas abuse by a relative is very common.

Privacy settings are a sensible thing to do, but it doesn't make you a bad parent if you've posted a few things publically.

Rather a judgemental and sanctimonious post, OP. And to think I sympathised when your teenage daughter stole £500 from your business

I suppose there might exist incredibly convoluted-minded paedophiles for whom the thrill lies in setting themselves complicated puzzles and doing things the difficult way. But for someone who just wants to abduct children it seems to me that there are hundreds of easier ways.

This kind of scenario is the kind of thing that gives Scandi-noir series their ludicrous aspect (that and the fact that the lighting is so bad that you can't see across the average police office).

OP, wouldn't you say that people who call their children by name in public and/or call their relatives by name are doing exactly the same thing? Surely much easier for this paedo to simply hang around the vicinity of his local school (shops, streets, parks) and listen to parents? Are they all bad parents, then?

More to the point, in the cases I know of where children have been abused, they have very often been children who have been warned excessively of stranger danger. That puts them at risk. The greatest danger comes from within: from relatives and trusted friends of the family. If you have been told the rest of the world are the dangerous ones, then there is nowhere you can go for help or advice.

@paxillin stop reaching! Put on some security settings or don't. It's your children you are exposing so do what suits you. I'll judge you as I see fit.

@youchangeyourusername ?? what are you talking about?

@paxillin stop reaching! Put on some security settings or don't. It's your children you are exposing so do what suits you. I'll judge you as I see fit

So do I. hysteria about this is dim and embarrassing. The real dangers lie elsewhere. Judge quietly unless you want to hear the answers.

What is it about my post that you don’t understand tinymango?

Social media has been around for many years yet a child has never been abducted in the way that you describe, it sounds like an episode of Luther! My settings on social media are private but I don’t think that the people who don’t keep theirs private are being bad parents!! There’s far worse happening!

@youchangeyourusername ?? what are you talking about?

Three things:

1. S/he talked about your OP being judgy. I agree with this. You do, too. You said you judge as you see fit.

1. S/he also said it is sanctimonious. Also true. You do think you are superior, since you tell others they are bad parents.

1. The third point she mentions is your other thread. You had very supportive responses. Nobody came on to say "people who bring up thieves are bad parents".

I'd be less worried about the child being abducted but more worried about the image being used inappropriately. Having had a lot of safeguarding training through my job you'd be surprised how the most innocent of images can be used in the wrong hands.

I have never agreed with putting pictures of children on the internet.
Your family life is private you don’t need to share it.
Using your child as a means of getting likes is just pathetic.

Abusers tend not to abduct the children of strangers. They insinuate themselves into the lives of your family, building up the trust of the parents, testing the child and the parents, before they start the abuse. They are in it for the long haul, sadly.

We have always told our child to ask for a password if someone ever says we've sent them. Whether at school or out on their own. Then run like hell in the opposite direction screaming their heads off.

Yes you should be careful with photos you post. Yes in theory someone could do what the OP suggests (although systems should be in place at schools and nurseries to prevent this) but always have a plan with your children just in case.

Bugger off