I have always been aware of the downside of posting your children on social media, and I can 100% say that I am an overly cautious person when it comes to certain things. But I decided way before Tayo was born that I was not going to show his face on any social media. This includes WhatsApp stories and Snapchat, where there is potential randoms who could decide to just screenshot pictures and pass them on. You are bound to read some things in this post that may have you feeling like “well if Mommy Tayo is already showing her child's body then then she’s already taking the risk” OR “the pictures sent on private chats with family can end up anywhere too”. Of course, there are a million different arguments around this! I’m not claiming to be perfect, nor am I here to indulge in these arguments.
That is not what todays post is about. This post serves as a way for me to communicate, in more depth, my personal reasoning behind my decision. You'll see I've shared the things that scared me to no end when I heard about them. These are my reasons and the research to support them as to why I made the decision to keep Tayo's face off social media.
Every mother, parent and caretaker I believe does their utmost best to protect and love their child/children. Please hear me when I say that THIS IS NOT A PERSONAL ATTACK on anyone reading this. Every parent has the right to chose to do things differently to how I may do them. This post only aims to add awareness around the seriousness of internet safety issues. Particularly on Instagram and Facebook. What you take from it is completely up to you, I do not judge you or your decisions as a parent.
This Mommy Tayo Blog is to share more about my life. This is a big part and a big question that I get from many people - why don’t you show your son’s face? / when will you show your son’s face?. May I just quickly add that I’d love for people to stop questioning big parenting decisions like this and just accept that this is how the parent has decided to do it. Asking out of curiosity is absolutely fine, but asking in an accusatory tone lends itself to parent shaming, which I am not here for. I know that the supporting research I’ve found is probably going to shock some of my readers. It definitely shocked me! Unfortunately, not everyone online is liking and commenting with good intentions. This we well know though. But we never for one moment think that we would ever find our child on a role play page o falling victim to identity theft.
Does that sound far fetched? Keep reading.
A child will have an average of 70,000 posts online by the time he/she is 18 years old. In fact, most of us start giving information about our babies before they are even born. Gender reveals and doctors appointments. Companies collect all this information for online advertising purposes and it’s way too easy for your Childs information to fall into the wrong hands.
In 2018 over 1 million cases of identity theft were reported. Two thirds of those cases included children under the age of 7. Mostly crime syndicates and gangs using a child's identity because it is represents a clean slate. I also read that Identity theft has tripled in recent years. These figures are real and this is happening every day.
My first big reason for withholding some of Tayo’s identity is IDENTITY THEFT. Barclay’s, a financial services provider, predict that two thirds of identity fraud affecting people over the age of 18 will be a direct result of “sharenting”. Sharenting is a new word I learnt, which is basically the sharing of a minors personal information by his/her parents & relatives. These days many prospective employers and tertiary education institutions are already using social media to vet their new admissions.
Did you know that up to 25% of children will have experienced identity theft in some way or another by the time they are 18. All they need is your name, date of birth and physical or email address. In America this information can cost as little as USD 30-40 to get the identity details of a minor. I'm sure we can agree that even you and I could become victims of this by someone simply finding a doctors invoice in the trash with too many personal details on it.
But we are focusing on the kids and how this could all possibly affect them, right.
Be careful of oversharing online. People out there that are committing these crimes are masterful at putting the puzzle pieces together. Even if you are sharing these details on different posts, once they are online, they are available to everyone. I’m not telling you this so that you live your life in fear, I’m simply trying to create awareness.
In the USA the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA) “prohibits data collection by websites and online services aimed at children under the age of 13, except with parental permission.” That last part is the loop hole that identity thieves thrive on. All our major social media apps (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Whatsapp) aren’t aimed specifically at children under 13. So any information we post online about our children is us automatically giving data collectors the consent to use that information.
World wide. It is after all the called the World Wide Web.
The unfortunate truth is that data about children is fair game for social media companies, their advertisers, and anyone else who might want to use (or misuse) the information. So, in order to protect the kids you love, you need to be aware of what you share.
South African legislation is a bit more difficult to understand and navigate. Now that could just be my technical impairment. Combined with the fact that if I search something on Google, I need to see it pop up or I won’t really know how to look for it…. But we have a few Legal Acts working together to protect our children.
1. The Film and Publications Amendment Act regulates the classification of publications, films and games as well as prohibited online content, such as child pornography.
2. The Child Justice Act protect the rights of children who are accused of, or who have committed, crimes.
3. The Electronic Communications Transaction Act also deals with online privacy and ICT (Information & Communications Technology) related offences.
Child protection online also falls under supporting laws like the Criminal Amendment Act, the Protection of Personal Information Act, and the Prevention for Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act.
So there is legislation working together here in South Africa working together to try and protect our minors.
According to a recent news report, South Africa has become a “fertile hunting ground” for online child sexual predators who use the internet and social media to target minors.
The FPB (Film and Publications Board) points out that 101 cases were referred to the board in 2018-19, mostly via its hotline, with some cases being referred to the International Association of Internet Hotlines (INHOPE, a global network of hotlines that deal with illegal content online, specifically content that targets children).
Your Childs identity can be used for a number of things surprisingly. Credit and loans, which can lead to a huge amount of debt in the victims name. Apart from finances, criminals sometimes steal another identity to hide their own. The stolen identity can be used to obtain employment as a foreign citizen, claim government grants, escape criminal charges or even claim life insurance policy benefits.
Did you know that it costs a measly R500 to get a fraudulent ID in South Africa?
In 2016 a High School student in Johannesburg, Lawrence Phakathi (seen left), was told he wasn’t able to graduate because of Identity Theft. Someone else had used his ID number, meaning he couldn’t register for his final examinations. The family had been battling the issue since January of 2016. His dream to become a climatologist was put in jeopardy. This is a real life threat that affected a real life person right here in South Africa. In the end he was able to write his exams because the Department of Home Affairs issued him a new ID number, with many supporting documents needed, and blocked the original one.
In 2018 a police officer in the USA was arrested, along with 7 others, for using a 12 year olds Personal Identification Information (PII) to gain access to over $25,000 in credit.
DIGITAL KIDNAPPING is another reason for me and this decision. I found out a few things about this that I had no idea existed! Role playing being the scariest and most mind blowing.
A woman in South Carolina, USA, found out she had been digitally kidnapped. Someone used the pictures that her dad had posted of her online starting from when she was 10 years old. This person then used those photos, pretending they were her father, and shared them on child pornography sites. The police alerted this woman, Miriam Webster, because they had arrested a man in New York for Child Pornography and found her pictures amongst his vast collection.
Digital Kidnapping is when a stranger steals a minors photo online and uses it as if it is their photo. Online role playing is the most prevalent form of Digital Kidnapping. People use pictures shared online and post them, role playing as the child's parent or even as the child itself. They then invite others to play as the child's family members, creating a whole fantasy situation with your child's photo. While most of these open role playing pages are pretty PG, not all of them are so innocent. Research shows that 90% of kids have photos on social media before they reach the age of 2 years old. This is an alarmingly high number considering the types of people lurking online that have full access to these images.
Don’t believe me? Look up the following hashtags on instagram: #BabyRP #ChildRP #AdoptionRP. There are over 100 hashtags like this that make children vulnerable to paedophiles online including #bathtime, #nakedkids #lovesbeingnude #pottytraining.
See below some samples of the accounts I found without even trying too hard…
Baby roleplay is considered to be the “creepiest corner of Instagram”. There are virtual adoption agencies, fake/ fantasy families and it is all role-played in the comments of the photos posted. This all probably sounds like its not reality if its never happened to you or anyone you know. But just because you don’t know about it doesn’t mean your photos/ videos aren’t being used elsewhere.
Many of these roleplaying or “rp” setups involve the premise of virtual adoption, or “finding” an abandoned baby with no family and “adopting” him or her. One user will pretend to be the “parent,” while another might pretend to be the “baby,” and then others can add to the story.
This kind of thing is not very easy to report from what I’ve read. Many people that have discovered their kids’ photos being used for role playing have tried, but the problem is that nothing in Instagram's policies prohibits roleplaying itself. However, stealing photos and impersonating someone is a violation of the sites rules. But this is something that’s super difficult to police. Role Players use filters or modify photos so that reverse image searches won’t match with the original photo. Not to mention how easy it is to make new accounts on Instagram. If one gets banned, the creator can just make another one.
There is another page on Instagram that I found called ‘Kids for Privacy’. I don’t think the page is still active, and I’m not 100% sure why they stopped posting, but they quoted something that really stuck with me:
“It’s your kid, but it’s their privacy"
They had started a really cool #privacyplease initiative on instagram which seems to have made waves back in 2013. You can see a bit more on this at Justine Kleeman - Kids for Privacy.
Another reality that came to light for me was that, much like youtube videos, Instagram videos and reels can be saved too. A simple google search led me to savefromnet.com and gram.io where you can do this, but there were also SO MANY MORE sites. So anyone accessing your profile can easily keep your personal videos for themselves to be used for whatever they so please.
When I searched @adoptionrp on Instagram I found the following page:
None of the above photos belong to the person that made this page.
Many reports that I read have said that these are not necessarily dirty old men looking for sexual gratification. Some are teenagers living out their fantasies of the perfect family that they possibly never got. So yes, it’s not all creepy and sexual, but for me the thought of my child’s face being used ANYWHERE online in this way, freaks me out. The thing is that if you find out that your child’s picture is being used for this, images are sometimes hard to report. These images themselves aren’t exploiting the children, because they’ve been posted online by the child’s actual parent. But the stories, offensive and abusive comments and fantasies that the role-players spin are sick in my opinion. I don’t think this can be labeled as ‘innocent’.
But how to you report a fantasy? This is why so many of these accounts still exist!
In mid-November, a Florida mother discovered Instagram photos of her 6-month-old daughter were being used on roleplaying accounts.
There are a few different narrative threads within this community: Those who adopt and proceed with normal parental tasks, or express empathy for their virtual babies; those who want to become physically abusive in their parental role, or sometimes, in the baby role; and those who use roleplaying as a means to act out “dirty” or sexually abusive fantasies.
That this content continues to exist on Instagram, while a photo of a woman’s bikini line is grounds for deletion, speaks to how inconsistent the company can be in dealing with offensive accounts. Same goes for Facebook, which owns Instagram. Facebook famously banned photos of women breastfeeding, but it currently allows videos of beheadings and is often slow to remove or acknowledge pages devoted to rape culture or acts of abuse and violence.
Back in April, a mother in Melbourne, Australia found her 18-month-old daughter’s photos were linked to questionable roleplaying accounts. Only after a cybersafety consultant contacted Instagram were the accounts in question shut down. But when one is shut down, another usually pops up in its place.
Read the full article on Baby Roleplaying here: Daily Dot
The third reason for my decision is that the INTERNET IS FOREVER. Just because you can no longer see it, does’t mean it’s not there. Deleted pictures are gone from your page/ site, but they are still available for anyone that looks hard enough. Once you put an image online it will be available forever!
When we do a normal Google search online we only see 0.03% of what is available on that topic online. This is known as the “Surface Web”. The rest of the information online is the “Deep Web”.
Think of the internet like an iceberg. What we see is only the tip of the iceberg compared to everything that is actually available online. A big part of the Deep Web, which I’m sure you’ve already heard of on detective movies and series, is the Dark Web. No one really knows how big the Dark Web is. Not only is it only attainable with a special browser, but it is also software that maintains the privacy of anyone using it. You need special software to access sites that don’t end in (.co.za) or (.com) but rather (.onion). Yes you read it correctly, onion, signifying the layers you need to peel back in order to get to these websites.
So to reiterate, the Dark Web guarantees all users complete anonymity and privacy. Some of the sites are even guarded by passwords or time access limitations, only letting users in up until a certain point.
In many ways, the Internet is like a time machine; there are sites which keep records of deleted posts, pages, and message boards.
This leads me to the fourth, and arguably the biggest, reason for my decision to keep most of Tayo’s identity off socials. Child Pornography.
Obviously the majority of child pornography sites are found on the Dark Web, because it’s a hundred times more difficult to catch perpetrators there. These sites are not something you’ll find by doing a simple Google search. They are well hidden.
I read about a man in Mpumalanga that was arrested in September this year (2021) because they found him with 9,000 child pornography items. Child pornography is considered to be the production, distribution & possession of child sexual abuse images. This man was found with images and videos in his possession, went to court and his bail was sent at the completely laughable amount of R1,000. The case was then postponed until 28 Oct. I haven’t done any further research into this case but the aim of the story is to show you that this happens on our doorstep as well. Research shows that there is over 1 million child sexual abuse images available online today.
The below link is for an interview with a Houston police officer who is part of a federal task force that investigates online child sex crimes. Seargent Mendez-Sierra discuses what he thinks you should know before posting your children and their information online and how pedophiles operate online. I unfortunately couldn't add the video straight onto this page as it isn't in on YouTube and, as I mentioned before, me and technology aren't always friends. So just tap on the link below which will take you to the Khou11 News page.
CICK HERE TO WATCH - Paedophiles using Social Media to Find Photos
Now, you may be sat there thinking, but my child isn’t a victim of sexual abuse so, by definition, how could they possibly be at risk of child pornography. It’s not as far fetched as you may think. Some images taken online from Facebook, Instagram and other social media accounts are manipulated and photoshopped. These people that collect the images of our children are able to paste the head of one child onto another child’s naked body. Think, for example, of the face swap app that launched years ago. It was a very realistic portrayal of what someone else face would look like on your body. If its that easy to develop an app that does it, how would it not be so much easier for someone who does it regularly for their own pleasure.
“(A pedophile) might like the way a particular child looks, so they take that face and morph it onto another shot they’ve come across online of a child sexual abuse image,” said Signy Arnason, director of Winnipeg-based Cypertip.ca, operated by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
One man recently reported seeing a morphed image of his daughter and two-year-old granddaughter. Other photos are ending up on “child model” sites that test the thin line between legal and illegal content. The sites typically feature children partially clothed in adult lingerie, or in highly sexualized poses. In 2014 alone, Cybertip tracked 90 pilfered images on the modelling sites. “That’s just a snapshot into one space,” Arnason said.
Read the full article here: National Post
A few months ago I actually came across a woman's page on Instagram. She was sharing on her stories about how she found a video she had uploaded of her daughter on another website/ account. The video had her daughter fully clothed in the cutest little princess dress, twirling and jumping around, nothing suggestive whatsoever. But the person that reposted this video added a voiceover, including innapropriate sexual innuendos, attracting all kinds of child predators in the comment section. She was explaining how she has tried to get hold of someone at Instagram to help her get the video taken down on the other page. But Instagram politely pointed out that their platform allows users to share what they feel comfortable with sharing and that because she willingly chose to share the video of her daughter on Instagram, there was nothing they could really do about it. I couldn’t imagine being in that situation and feeling so helpless and infuriated!
Similarly, a journalist found a fan page of a 5-year-old boy who had been uploaded to an exploitation site. A total of 979 photos and over 100 videos with him. All shared online by his mother and then stolen from social media. The journalist contacted his mother to let her know. Turns out she was already aware about this page and had tried to shut it down. Once she had succeeded in banning one profile, another profile popped up using the same images. She eventually closed all her social media.
Instagram is known as the most widely used social media platform, and has over 200 million monthly users. In 2019 Instagram removed 12.6 million pieces of content considered to be child nudity or sexual exploitation of children. Facebook’s numbers where slightly lower at 11.6 million pieces of content. The New York Times reported that Facebook Messenger is responsible for 12 million of the 18.4 millions worldwide reports of child abuse material. Pedophiles use patterned language and specific phrases to identify and share content with one another. Accounts like Instagram and Facebook are just a gateway to apps like Snapchat, Kik and Wickr where it is much harder to be tracked down. But I noticed that Whatsapp recently added a new feature that allows you to send a photo to be viewed only once, much like Snapchat.
I also took the liberty to have a look at change.org and when searching “Child Pornography on Instagram and Facebook”, over 800 petitions came up to stop/ ban child pornography, exploitation and paedophilic accounts.
See the below video on how the FBI catches Peadaphiles:
Obviously we can’t all live in a bubble and I don’t believe that what me and my family do. We can’t protect our kids from everything and everyone that has ill intentions. But I have made the decision to protect my child in this aspect where I can and within reason. Everyone we know as a family knows about my wishes and respects them even if they may not completely agree with or understand it.
There are many ways that you can practice safety online when it comes to your children. And if anything I hope this post has at least helped you to understand where the risks lie. And also how to possibly navigate around those risks. I want to just clarify once again that I DO NOT judge or think ill of any mothers that choose to post their children online. In fact I follow some amazing moms all over the world that I greatly admire and have formed special friendships with.
My intention is to spread awareness and understanding into these very real threats that our children face in the world, so that we as parents and family members can hopefully create a safer future when it comes to the internet. This will eventually debilitate those who are using it for all the wrong reasons. If you see a sketchy account, please report it.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of identity theft or digital kidnapping and you feel you'd like to share your story we would love to hear it! Either here in the comments or on my Instagram page.
If you are interested in reading more in depth about some of the above mentioned topics, here are a few of the articles that I found to be super interesting:
Glamour - Risks of Posting Photos of Kids on Instagram Medium - How Peaedophiles Steal Photos From Social Media
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More momsplaining next week…
Important note: I am not a professional in any of the topics discussed on this blog. The topics above are purely opinions based on my own real life experiences.
Other resources:
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