September 5th 2023.
As parents, we all want to share the exciting moments in our children's lives. While Back-to-School photos are a great way to mark the start of a new school year, we should be mindful of the risks that come with posting these images on social media.
Online safety experts warn that these seemingly innocent photos can be misused by scammers and predators. The details in the pictures, such as the name of the school, teacher’s name, and a child’s birthday, can lead to dangerous situations such as people showing up unannounced to your child’s school. Iskander Sanchez-Rola, the Director of Privacy Innovation at Norton, said, “anyone can know where your child is a majority of the day, Monday through Friday.”
Things get even scarier when we consider how easily a child’s name and image can be accessed. Reverse image searching a photo of your child’s face on Google can provide scammers with enough information to contact them directly on social media. Google’s Help page explains that a reverse image search works like searching for a word or phrase. It can provide scammers with search results of objects in the image, similar images, and websites with the image or a similar image.
Finally, even if your child doesn’t get targeted by malicious individuals, they might still face humiliation from their peers. Kaitlin Allair Tiches from the Boston Children’s Digital Wellness Lab said that embarrassing photos and videos that parents find silly could be very embarrassing to their children.
All in all, Back-to-School photos can be great memories to look back on, but parents should think twice about sharing them on social media. Posting these photos can put your child at risk, both now and in the future.
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