I thought this article was interesting because it's an example of adults being prone to online safety. It's not just teens or kids that have to practice online safety, but adults do too, and an article from The New York Times called Guardians of Their Smiles is a perfect example of why they need to.

“Someone had created a fake profile, using headshots of Mrs. Gwozdz’s 4-year-old daughter.

“They gave her a fake name, Melodie Cuthbert, and a relationship status that said she was interested in making friends and dating men,” Mrs. Gwozdz recalled in a recent telephone interview. Other Orkut members had given the profile a “sexy” rating of two and a half hearts.

The discovery turned out to be little more than a gut-churning prank. According to a Flickr spokeswoman, young teenage girls in Brazil were copying children’s pictures from the photo-sharing site to create “paper doll” profiles, then giving each other “sexy” ratings depending on the quality of their work.

Mrs. Gwozdz contacted Flickr and Orkut, which deleted the profiles. And Mrs. Gwozdz has now taken advantage of Flickr’s privacy settings. But to this day she occasionally gets e-mail messages to her Flickr account from strangers saying things like “family very beautiful” and “I would ask you, let me use the photos of his daughter.”

This article may be about parents posting pictures, but teens can definitely activate the privacy settings on their Flickr of Photobucket accounts as well. I personally think the safest way to share pictures is the old-fashioned way! Print out pictures and mail them to friends or family, or show them off at an upcoming family gathering. You can even copy your pictures to CDs and mail them out! This way, family members can even order prints of the pictures themselves.

There are so many possibilities out there--sharing pictures via photo-sharing sites isn't the only way to share pictures. Besides, it's your kids that you're taking pictures of. Don't you want them to be safe too?

With all the holiday photos that will be taken this season, why not talk to your parents and friends about how they plan to distribute them?

Julia

This article may be about parents posting pictures, but teens can definitely activate the privacy settings on their Flickr of Photobucket accounts as well."