What is the danger in posting pictures online?

People may see them – people who you would rather not see them. They may then use those pictures (of your likeness) in ways you can’t imagine and may not approve of.

Anyone can peer into your life. More than you would believe. It is not a bad thing, but you should be aware of the potential for abuse. You can always use passwords and give them only to your friends and family.

Once posted, pictures never die. They can be captured and kept, circulated, reposted forever. College students who post drunken pictures of themselves and their friends on Facebook should consider this when they think ahead to their future professions and job applications.

Well… I have one case that might interest you. A while ago, a boy was kidnapped and murdered. It was very sad, and the family was completely devastated obviously. As the investigation continued, the police found out that the captors had spotted this kid on facebook! The captors made a fake facebook account, and had been spying on this kid for months. They knew everything about him because of the things he posted. Vacation albums, parties, status updates, locations, etc. Maybe the kid was careless by “accepting a friend request” of someone he obviously didnt know, but it was very tragic and it made me realize how dangerous it is to post personal information or photos.

photos are only your memory of someone’s appearance, materialized. i don’t really see the big deal in most cases (most cases, meaning i do see a problem with 14 year old girls posting pornstar-esque pictures on their myspaces; that can obviously create some problems).

but it’s not like we can filter who sees us face to face. those people are potentially a whole lot more dangerous than folks on the internet, as they have the advantage of already being capable to physically reach us. yes, dangerous situations have arisen from posting pictures online, but to refuse to put any photos up for that reason? might as well stay in doors with the curtains down, because you’re facing the same danger by showing yourself in public. you just can’t see the audience online.

If it is posted online it stops being a private life.

To sum it up:
online predators (pedophiles) or identity theif

Definitely the online creepers who will clip your pics to impersonate you and busy themselves with digging up IRL info on you. I’ve seen this happen and now I’m a lot more skittish online than I used to be. Kind of a killjoy but the weirdos really are out there.

On site like this one where you may feel a camaraderie with more of the members than less users, it can feel safe to post your pics and share more of your IRL identity but you’re still sharing with all the site.

The only experience I have with this is that a picture of my daughter when she was a baby was used by a political activist site during the 2004 US Presidential election.

For a while this photo was the number two hit on google images for “baby angel”. Somehow this political activist website used a google trick to redirect all clicks on this image to their site. I was less than impressed and hence most every picture of my family I post now is visible only to those invited to see it.

@tiffyandthewall nice responce!

I think dangerous and sick people are that off the internet too. Sure, I agree that contact and communication is much easier now than fifteen years ago, and literally everyone is on the net these days. But I am not sure if we are more in danger now than before. I think it’s just different.

Something of interest if it’s correct, is that wikipedia’s article on violent crimes in the US shows a continuous drop of violent crime since 1993, more or less with the introduction of internet.

But to connect to the actual Q. I post any picture I feel like, of me and my son. I don’t know what will happen with them, but I don’t really care. If they make someone else happy to see, and use, that’s fine. There are “what if’s” with everything in life.

Conceeded paranoia will always fuel this rediculous concern.

I have been reluctant to post photos online, though there are a few. It’s only that there are certain relatives I’d rather not reacquaint myself with who may now have internet access, and I don’t want them to be able to find me.

It’s paranoia in my opinion. I post any picture online with no worries. It’s just like the “Craigslist Killer” in the news recently. The media likes to vilify the internet and technology any chance they get. If he had used newspaper classified ads to find the girls he killed they wouldn’t have said “Newspaper classified killer”. But people see those headlines without really understanding the technology so they think that everyone on the internet is out to kill them or rape them or scam them in some way.

Sure it could happen, but people were dying long before the internet, pedophiles existed long before the internet, etc. People can also target you or your kids while at Chuck E Cheese and the grocery store.

I once had a crazy stalker girl on myspace who posted my pictures on her site and made comments about them below. Wierd thing is that we had no mutual friends, so I don’t know how she thought this was hurting me at all.