Do You Post Pics of Your Kids Anywhere?

I don't use instagram or whatever you're using but I pull photos off my camera and post them to my private facebook account. I have the settings set so that only my friends and family can see the photos so unless any of my friends or family are pervs and I don't know it, the pictures are ok. If any of my friends or family are pervs, I have bigger issues than whether they have a photo of her or not because they see her in person. This is why I don't have an issue with posting the photos to a private account. Would I post them to a public account that can get crawled by web spiders and have the photos harvested by search engines? Nope. Understand your privacy settings and share some snapshots!

HA! This EXACT topic was the final thing that caused a giant rift between us (my husband and I) and my SIL. I was always against putting pictures of our kids up. Initially, DH didn't have a problem with it. After his sister put a few up, he started getting comments from people that he hadn't spoken to since high school (and had no desire for them to know what was going on in his personal life), he decided it made him uncomfortable as well. So, I asked everyone who had pictures of her up (SIL, my best friend, & my aunt) to take them down.

At any rate, my feelings on it were/are this:
Just because *I* don't know how to access pictures that aren't "shared" with me specifically doesn't mean that others don't know how. In fact, I know there are people that do. If it's online, SOMEONE can find it. I don't feel comfortable putting my kids out there for anyone to see. It's not something I'm comfortable with. So, we don't allow pictures of our daughters online.

I do not have any of those accounts, but I am a pro photographer and I do have pictures on my website of my kids and on facebook. I don't put their names on it, so no one would know who they are unless they know me

I'm not sure what instagram is, but we do use shutterfly to share our pictures of our growing boy (we live 2500 miles from any of our family or friends). Our page is private . . . we have to add any email addresses that can sign up for our page.

I love instagram. I agree with both sides. There are a lot of pervs out there. But I also enjoy sharing photos. If you are completely anonymous and take candid shots of your child not showing her face or location, then maybe that would be a good compromise.

It does bother me when other people post pictures of my children, I really, really hate that because I have no control over who sees those pictures.

THere was a study on those iPhone type apps. If you have pics on your phone and it has the gps feature, then anyone can get to your phone and find out your address. They actually walked up to people and showed them how to do it. They found the kids' houses, bedrooms, parks, schools. It was scary. This was a news show a couple weeks ago.

I can't even download my pics off my camera to my computer. That's why I have teenagers. I (they) send pics to grandmas through email.

I'm not familiar with the app/websites you're talking about, other than facebook. But my family (parents, siblings, etc.) share an account on a website called Fotki where we can post photos and videos. It's a public site, anyone can view photos unless you make it private. For a long time, all of the pictures were available for viewing, but the longer it went on, the more various family members became uncomfortable with the names, dates, and locations being posted for anyone to see. We took all names off the folders and photos, and we made all family albums (anything with people, specific homes, vacations, etc.) private with a password that they would have to get from a family member in order to see the pictures. I'm somewhat more comfortable with this arrangement (except that there are some family members who are still pretty free with passing out the password), but I absolutely will not post photos on Facebook and hate it when other people post photos there of me or my kids. There are just too many quirks with their privacy settings.

I'm not entirely sure what the risk is for any one family being targeted, but I'm not sure I want to test it with my own kids either.

I only have a couple hundred pics of my DD on facebook. ;) I have my albums set to 'friends only', and even if someone DOES hack into my account or anything, I don't have any of my real info connected to it. So it's not like a stalker would be able to find her, in the very unlikely case that would happen. I feel like more perverts see my DD when we are at the park, or the grocery store, than do on FB.

Of course, I moved across the country while I was pregnant... my family has only met my DD in person once. So the only way they can watch her grow up is by the pics I post.