Internet Fears

Since a blogger friend of mine decided to end her blog (that sounds so dramatic) because she felt she was exposing too much online and didn't want to exploit her unborn daughter, I've been thinking about how much I put out there for anyone and everyone to see. I wouldn't ever say anything on here that I wouldn't say in real life and I'm okay with posting personal things about myself because what can anyone do with information about my boring life and opinions, really?

But I do post pictures of my baby. Lots and lots of picture. And that has started to kinda freak me out.

So I've decided to start putting a watermark on all of my pictures of Natalie. I think it kinda ruins a photo but it makes me feel better about exposing her so much so publicly. I'm flattered when I see people find my blog by Googling words like, "beautiful babies" but really weirded out when they find me by searching things like "hispanic four month old baby boy" (?). It makes me wonder why they're looking for those images. I don't think I'm being paranoid, because there are some crazy people out there. And I have some examples.

Long ass story and stalker-y details short, a friend of a friend had a picture of a baby as his profile picture on Facebook. I found out that it wasn't his kid, just some random persons baby. By some strange turn in the universe I was reading an article on Yahoo the other day and found the person whose baby it actually was, via the comments section. I thought about messaging this person and just sending them the link to his page but decided not to.

I also knew someone once who faked an entire pregnancy and the birth. She posted pictures of a baby online that she said was hers, but it wasn't. It could have been a family member she took the pictures from, or she could have taken the photos from anywhere on the internet.

Crazy shit, and I know I have to be careful. Honestly there isn't much harm anyone could do by using my kids picture and passing it off as their own if they wanted to, but it creeps me out and would really piss me off if they did. I probably would never find out anyway, but I still want to be cautious while showing the world my daughter.