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Saturday, 8 October 2016

#Alert Your Kid Pics - Child Pornography Closer Than You Think!

Kawartha Lakes Families Could Your Children Be Porn Targets?

Kawartha Lakes Mums and other parenting sites may be potential fodder for child pornographers.
After Peterborough Police recently charged a 49 year old man with possessing and distributing  child pornography, we discovered a potentially ugly problem on Pinterest.
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Some of our readers know we make it our policy to avoid posting identifiable pictures of children online.

Child Porn: Who Pinned Your Kid Pics?

Kawartha Lakes Mums photo policy came after seeing an eye opening OPP presentation "The Internet -The Good, Bad and Ugly".
Since the only children's photos we post online are from advertisers or public domain photos, how could these put children at risk?
We were shocked at the ugliness we discovered on Pinterest.

Pinterest - Child Pornographers Pin too!

Usually when someone repins one of our craft photos we are thrilled to increase our reach.
However, a Pinterest follower was saving our craft pattern and giveaway photos to a file labeled "Children".
That seemed a little odd.
On further investigation, we noticed
sprinkled amongst pictures of female toddlers repinned from mummy bloggers, were uploads of toddlers in provocative poses. 
This male profile also had a large number of people re-pinning his provocatively posed children.
We  reported the profile to Police and blocked it.
However, this incident has given us much food for thought.

Child Porn : What Role Can Parenting Blogs Play?

If no pictures of children were posted online,child porn would be easy to spot.
Should we campaign for "No Child Left Online"?
On the other hand, could family style bloggers play an important role in catching child pornographers?
We certainly do not recommend  using pictures of your children as bait, or vigilante practices that could impede investigations.
However, watching to see how non-identifiable images of children are being used and reporting misuses might be useful to police investigations.

Child Porn: Where Are Your Kids Pics?

There are several ways to check to see where your images are being used online.
One way is google image search, another is Tineye -an app developed right here in Ontario.
Once again we are appealing to parents and schools -
Do not post identifiable images of children online.
You want to show children learning in a classroom setting? Post images of their hands and forearms engaged in the activity.
Want to show the world a cute costume?
Put it on stuffed bear.
Yes, we are proud of our children. However, not everyone cherishes our children in the same way that we do.
Posting identifiable images of children, especially with their name and address or school name, makes children vulnerable prey.

 What do you do to protect your children from pornographers?
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