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Parents should avoid posting features that could reveal a home address such as a house number, an identifiable front door or street signs, according to the police.
An image of a school uniform, school buildings or an image with Geotags can also offer clues for those snooping online as to the whereabouts of your child during the day. The age and full name of a child can also be problematic in the wrong hands.
“We know that people want to share those exciting moments about their family … and there are ways we can do this, but we really encourage parents to think about the information that you’re sharing about your child, particularly when you’re putting photos up online,” Aisling Waldron from the digital safety team at the Department of Internal Affairs says.
“I think often child exploitation can be seen as an overseas issue and something that doesn’t happen here at home but we know that it does,” she says, adding that police in New Zealand are constantly investigating complaints about sexual and online exploitation.
Waldron points to a video from the Australian Federal Police that shows parents how to scrub identifying information such as school logos from a photo and a diagram of harmless information gleaned from an image that could be weaponised. New Zealand’s Keep It Real Online website also has resources to help parents, she says.
Social media influencer Maria Foy, who made a name for herself as Happy Mum Happy Child, recently posted an image of her daughter in her school uniform. However, she was careful not to include a logo that might give away what school her daughter attends.
“A long time ago, when things got a bit hairy online with trolls and stuff, I realised it was really important to not show where my kids were going to school,” Foy, who has more than half a million followers on social media, says.
“It’s one thing to post privately to your friends but it’s another to post publicly whether you’ve got five followers or 100,000 followers. It is still public.”
The dangers of posting images of kids online are divided into three categories: Physical safety, digital safety and emotional safety, Leanne Ross, the chief customer officer at Netsafe, says. Some parents pay more attention to physical safety – such as stranger danger – when digital and emotional safety is more often breached.
“For example, knowing a trusted adult’s full name, like mum or dad, knowing a hobby or somewhere they hang out regularly like a gymnastics club, a soccer pitch or a rugby pitch, something that would enable a stranger to message them online and pretend they know them through someone else or through a place.
“That [information] would get them over the hurdle most kids are really good at, which is ‘I don’t know you. I’m not gonna talk to you’.”
Leanne Ross from Netsafe.
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However, the emotional damage that social media can cause is Ross’ major concern. This could mean a child feeling self-conscious about comments that their image might attract when posted online.
Parents should seek consent from their child before posting images with details about who will see it or how public it is. Something like posting to Instagram Stories is helpful because the content – unless screen grabbed – is only public for 24 hours so kids have more control over their image, Ross says.
“It gets in that habit of saying ‘Can I take a photo of you? Can I put it here? Are you OK with that?’”
New Zealand’s Keep It Real Online website also has resources to help parents, she says.
