The internet sure is bringing everyone closer...but I'm starting to feel claustrophobic.
Recently there have been some discussions about creeps and pedophiles stealing people's kid pics and using them on their slimy sites. So now I am extremely neurotic and removing all attractive tags from my photos and removing them from groups about children that pedos like to frequent, so the chances of my boys or nieces ending up on some kiddie porn site are much lower. In addition to this, I am looking to see who is faving my kids' pictures, and looking to see what their other favourite pics are, and blocking them if they are all of children. There is a running list that someone on Flickr has compiled of suspicious users, and I am keeping record of them all!
I am also searching Technorati to see who else is linking to my photo site, and taking note of that as well. I am finding this to be vexing, however, because the search results are sometimes misleading. This blog is supposed to have a link to this photo on it somewhere, but I can't find where.
Here is a blog entry that features a photo of mine. They didn't ask for my permission first, however they did credit me appropriately with a link back to my site, so I'm not that upset about it.
Thus far I have found nothing that is linking to any of my children's pictures, so I guess we are all safe...for now.
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4 comments:
Bizzy,
Let me play the devil's advocate here. Assume that a "pedophile" happens across your Flickr photos and decides to masturbate while looking at the pictures of your kids. What harm has been done? To take it further, assume he masturbates himself to orgasm while looking at your boys, then leaves you a comment telling you just what he's done. What harm has been done? You might be offended, you might feel violated, but when your kids go to bed that night have they really been harmed at all? In a way they they can actually realize?
CPE
CPE,
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you likely don't have kids. If you did you wouldn't make such a stupid comment on this post. Instead you would not berate me for feeling the way I, and many, many other parents in my situation, do.
I thought for awhile as to whether or not I would publish your comment, and then decided to go ahead so that others can see what kind of attitudes we have to deal with about this issue.
Obviously I cannot control what people do with things they see on the internet in the comfort of their own homes...I'm not THAT gullible. However if there is a way that I can lessen the chances that one of these sick fucks can download and use my kids' pics for their own twisted purposes (i.e. a kid porn site/blog) then for the love of God and all that is holy in this world I AM GOING TO DO IT.
By the way I have the sane problems with Technorati that you mentioned.
I believe (I hope) that my comments on the matter are independent of whether I do or do not have children.
The point I tried to make (in a backwards way) was that many people worry excessively about "things" that are either highly improbable or not truly harmful, but fail to devote sufficient consideration to those things with a more realistic probability of causing actual harm.
Your children are far more likely to be harmed by an automobile than to ever be harmed by a pedophile. Even if your kid's picture does end up on a pedophile's blog, no real harm has been done, though I can see how it could be really annoying and frustrating.
Part of living in society rather than living in isolation is that some people are gonna do what they're gonna do. Sometimes that means they look at pictures and get some thrill from them that most people don't. Personally, I don't worry about it.
Thanks for clarifying Anon. For the record, I'm not up at night worrying over it either, I am just careful what I am subjecting to public scrutiny when I upload pics of my kids. It is (unfortunately) a very sick world we live in, and there are people that, no matter what you do, are going to abuse and exploit.
BTW, by going around trying to 'talk some sense' into seemingly neurotic parents on the crusade against child porn and pedophiles, one only draws suspicion towards themselves. Just sayin'...
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