A couple of years ago, moms just carried photos of their kids in their wallets. If anyone cared to listen to them, they would just take the photos out of their wallets to show their kids off.
But thanks to the internet, moms don’t need to do that anymore. They don’t even need to carry photos with them. Nowadays, proud moms just go online to post all the cute photos of their kids.
So consider yourself lucky if you’re a mom in this digital era. Thanks to the onset of social media networks, you now have a platform to display every single photo of you kids.
You can seize every single milestone in a photo and upload online. In just a matter of seconds, the whole world knows about your child.
But then you just have to be careful. According to an article on cafemom.com, “oversharing” your child’s photos and updates isn’t such a safe practice after all.
… a new study by New York University argues this tendency isn’t just potentially annoying, but could put your kids in danger, too.
So how and why exactly are you endangering your kids online?
The 5 online mistakes of moms potentially put their kids at risk for identity theft.
For instance: People trolling parents’ profiles could deduce their kids’ first and last names, birth dates, home addresses and other personal information … which turns them into easy prey for abduction or identity fraud. Yikes!
So now is really a good time for you to assess your online habits. You surely wouldn’t want to endanger your kids with the following online activities:
1. Blasting your child’s birthday or birth date online.
It’s safer to greet your child face-to-face rather than to yell it out on the internet. Birth dates are the kinds of information identity thieves look for.
2. Using your child’s name.
With your child’s birth date and name posted online, identity thieves can easily open any kind of account using your child’s identity.
3. Not making your pages private.
Make sure to familiarize yourself with the privacy settings of your social media account. You wouldn’t want to deal with total strangers, right? You also wouldn’t want them to see every single photo and know every bit of information about you, right?
4. Having too many “friends.”
Who would have ever thought that having too many friends can be quite dangerous? But it is, online. Think about it. Would you actually want everybody to know everything about you and your family?
5. Not encrypting photos.
You can limit the views of the photos to your chosen audience if you encrypt them. This is definitely an added layer of security for you and your family.
It’s not easy to be aware of all these mistakes especially if you just want to yell out to the whole world that you’re a proud mom. But you really have to think hard about it. The article on cafemom.com is surely an eye-opener so moms, consider yourself informed.
Do you have some other tips on how to keep your child safe online?
