Online SecuritySHARENTING
Are you a mother, a father, a grandmother, an uncle, a sister or a drooling godmother? So this is for you.
Intentionally or inadvertently, we often create a digital file of the children we love so much. We disclose your name, your age, who your parents, friends and family are, what your preferences and behaviours are.
This is called #sharenting
– contraction of the English words ‘share’ and ‘parenting’, and refers to publications concerning a child, by its parents, educators, relatives or close persons.
Remember that “once on the internet, forever on the internet” and that, in this case, the person directly targeted (the child) does not have an active voice in what is happening to their image and privacy.
As we age, this digital dossier created by Sharenting can be extremely unfair and penalizing. It will be very difficult to disassociate themselves from this image and characterization (which they did not ask for, and most likely do not want for themselves). They may lose their sense of privacy, as well as trust in their parents and those closest to them.
Sharenting poses a number of risks to minors:
– ridicule
– cyberbullying
– psychological constraints
– sale of your personal data
– scams on his behalf
– use of your image for illicit purposes
Any publicly shared image (or information) can be downloaded and used by anyone, and not everyone will have good intentions in doing so.
Do not share photos of children or information about them in public! NEVER!
“But I only share pictures of the children, with family and friends”
If your tweets are protected and your Instagram account is private: Do you really know all the people who follow you?
On Facebook, you can choose who you share with. For each photo, you can restrict access to a specific group. However, Can you guarantee that everyone in that group will take the same care as you and not use them publicly?
Once you put a photo online, you lose control over it.
“But there is nothing wrong with the photos I publish”
Although they do not have this character, for most people, there are those who find sexual gratification in the most innocent photo of a child.
In Oct2015, millions of images taken from social networks were found on paedophile websites. Innocent photographs were posted on Facebook by the children's parents. Sexual predators, who were already strategically part of the group of friends of their parents, appropriated the photos and subsequently shared them on pedophile websites, associating those innocent images with sexually explicit and disturbing comments.
If a portion of these photos were published directly by the children, the vast majority were published by the parents.
There are international networks, which use social networks, to find photos of minors, which they use as currency to access restricted forums, on the dark web,
Such people, in order to access these forums, have to “contribute” with their own photos. The easiest way to do this is by rescuing the photos you post.
But that's not all.
Photographs can disclose various information, which, for security, if they want private.
From the analysis of some photos, we can quickly conclude, for example:
– what is your school
– who are your friends
– where they usually play
– if you like football or ballet
– if you prefer gums or chocolate
– if you have a dog or a cat
– at what time of day are they usually in that park
– on which beach they are at the moment, and with whom
This information allows the child to be easily located, and for people with bad intentions to know exactly how to approach the child, with accurate conversation topics.
Finally, you should also know that the law protects the privacy of citizens, particularly if they are minors.
In Italy, a 16-year-old , accused his mother of lewdness in private life, and she was convicted by the court.
In Portugal, in a case of a divorced couple in 2015, the Court considered that the parents should “refrain from disseminating photographs or information allowing the identification of the daughter on social networks.”
One of the parents appealed, but the court upheld its decision and stressed that “Children are not things or objects which belong to their parents and which they can dispose of at their own pleasure. They are persons and therefore holders of rights.”
English