We are in the middle of the Holiday Season and many of us want to share our experiences with our loved ones and friends. Those like me that are celebrating their first holiday season as a Parent and have most of their loved ones living in another country or having to take a plane to see them, have to look for creative ways to share these experiences without breaching your privacy or the privacy of your young ones.
I know it might be tempting to post a video of your baby while she sings or dances to a Christmas Carol. In our case we call them Aguinaldo’s but you really need to evaluate many factors before taking that step.
Don’t Share them Online
Go old school and mail your favorite pictures to your family members and close friends that deserve to share those moments. Even sending them a CD or even better a DVD of your favorite family videos might be a neat gift for a grandparent that does not get to see their grandkids as often as they would like. Sending something tangible like actual printed pictures for individuals of my parent’s generation has a lot more value than sending a digital copy.
Setting Up Privacy Online for what you share
If you still feel like you want to share your experiences and memories online, establishing privacy settings might be a better option than no privacy. Many people choose to post their kids pictures on Facebook. I personally don’t like how Facebook’s privacy settings change so often that it makes it difficult for many of us to keep up with it. My recommendation is to set up an account that is private. A YouTube account where you can add a group of individuals to see content you have classified private.
The Privacy can be changed by those with Access
Always keep in mind that once you post something online people who have access to the content or files you published can easily make it public. Let those you share content know that you prefer not to have those memories shared with anyone else but those which you gave access.
In my case since at my company we create websites and develop apps we created a website for our daughter with some security features around the content so only those that we granted access too will be able to view, comment, and share the experiences of our daughter growing up. By building the website and hosting it on our servers we have a lot more control of who goes in and even how people interact with the content. We normally post a few times a month with updates on my Daughter’s Milestones. This will be a virtual album for my daughter when she grows up.
So if during the Holiday Season you wish to share your memories with others keep in mind that there are risks lurking around when you publish your content publicly online.
We will also share a future post on our opinion of the risks of posting online content and reasons why we recommend staying away from it?
Do you publish your kids’ pictures online? If so what motivates you to post these pictures?
I don’t think many people put pictures up with malintent. However, there are many who parents who have known and unknown enemies that would take those same precious moments and do harm. Thanks for the post Raul.