5 Reasons to Keep Information About Your Kids Far, Far Away From Facebook

As everyone and their Grandma hops onto the social media bandwagon, safety concerns have become secondary to attracting comments and sharing information. Parents posting the latest pictures of their kids on Facebook is almost more common than people re-sharing cat photos.
The average mom or dad who uses Facebook to share sensitive info about their children or post harmless holiday pictures probably never thought these updates could put their kids’ safety at risk — but they can.
5 Reasons to Keep Information About Your Kids Far, Far Away From Facebook

1. Sex offenders routinely search social media profiles and download pictures of kids.
2. Predators can use information parents post to figure out the physical location of their kids.
3. It sets a good example. When your kids are on Facebook themselves, you want them to exercise an appropriate level of discretion level.
4. The Internet has a permanent, elephant-like memory. Everything you post has a “digital footprint” so even if you decide you want to remove something, it never really gets erased.
5. Parents often tag photos of their kids using their full names, and even post their kids’ exact birthdays. This allows predators to potentially find your kids, make contact, and manipulate them because they already have so much information. Imagine a stranger walking up to your child and saying “Hi Samantha Roberts, I’m a friend of your dad’s. You just had a birthday, right?” At the very least, this would be disorienting for a young child.

It’s a sad, disgusting reality of our times when parents have to self-censor their own electronic communication out of fear that the wrong person might get their hands on it. But here we are. I think we can certainly all agree on this — when it comes to protecting kids, it’s ALWAYS better to be safe than sorry.
When Using Facebook, Keep Your Kids Safe Using the Following Tips:

• Never reveal where you live.
• Don’t post about upcoming vacations — This makes you vulnerable to break ins.
• Never offer up information about your kids’ daily routine and habits
• Don’t post anything under a “public” privacy setting
• Don’t post pictures of your kids on Facebook.

This last one might be the most difficult piece of advice for parents to follow, especially if tech-savvy moms are used to just snapping a picture with their iPhone and uploading it to Facebook. But, parents should know that there are other ways to share photos with friends and family. Instead of using a highly visible social media platform like Facebook, parents can opt for more secure programs like Picasa to electronically share family photos with distant relatives. With this program, private albums are not searchable by the public and can only be viewed by the intended audience, pre-selected in advance by the owner of the album.

source: http://blog.instantcheckmate.com/parents-think-twice-before-putting-pictures-of-your-kids-on-facebook/

Stop the Sick Baby Facebook Hoax

Our effort to stop this sick hoax.

Facebook has been plagued with hoaxes practically ever since it became the number 1 social networking site on the Internet all those years ago. Many of these hoaxes are merely time wasting exercises simply designed to trick Facebook users into looking silly, such as the classic “Facebook is shutting down” status updates which persist endlessly on the site, or perhaps the “Facebook is charging” joke that just never disappears.

However there is one specific hoax that is certainly not harmless, and it is one that we at ThatsNonsense.com as well as several other of the Internet’s leading scambusting websites have worked hard at trying to make disappear.

It’s the “sick baby Facebook hoax” which involves images of sick, injured or disabled children circulating the site under the false claim that sharing or liking the photo will invoke donations in aid of the child. Many of these hoaxes state that Facebook will donate money, others use other companies or charities.

These hoaxes typically state something like “1 share = $1” or similar. Not only are these hoaxes always utterly untrue they are particularly sick because the photos of the children have essentially been stolen elsewhere from the Internet and used without the permission of the child or it’s carers/guardians/parents. Essentially the sick child’s photo is being exploited for the hoax, and for the twisted enjoyment of the hoaxer.

An example of a photo that is used in this sick hoax

In fact in certain cases the hoaxers have taken photos of children who have since passed away and used them in these hoaxes.

Of course the hoaxes that manage viral “success” can be shared hundreds of thousands of times and can cause great distress to the families of the children in the photos.

We have teamed up with several other websites including Facecrooks, The Bulldog Estate, Hoax-Slayer and the Facebook Security&Privacy Guide to both help spread the truth about these hoaxes and to explain what users need to do if they come across these photos.

So what should you do?

It’s pretty simple what you can do to help us combat these hoaxes –
1. Never Share or Like these photos. If you do you are playing right into the hoaxers hands and potentially causing great distress to the families involved, and of course you’re passing false information to all of your Facebook friends.

2. Avoid commenting on the photos. Even if you know the photo is a hoax a comment can make the post appear on the tickers of your Facebook friends and can help spread the photo. Not many people read the comments attached to a photo anyway.

3. Instead of a comment you can send a private message to the person who uploaded the photo and explain it is a sick hoax and ask them to remove it.

4. Report the photo. Many people who upload these photos will never take then down voluntarily, so Facebook will do it for you. Make Facebook aware of the photo by clicking the Report option.

In the pop-up photo viewer you can report the photo under the options men, else the report photo is underneath “download”.

5. Report the photo to the Stop Sick Children Hoaxes Facebook group run by one of the admins of the Bulldog Estate here.

You can read about this hoax in our blog post here.

Since these hoaxes begun we have managed to educated many , many thousands of Facebook users and that number is still rising. Every time one of these hoaxes is uploaded it is removed faster than ever and more and more Facebook users are aware of the true nature of these hoaxes. We’re winning the battle, one user at a time. Help us and spread the word!

source: http://thatsnonsense.com/viewdef.php?article=facebook_babies_hoax

Facebook Share Hoax - $1.20 Per Share to Help Girl With Cancer

Brief Analysis
The message is a nasty and immoral hoax. Sharing the child's photograph will do nothing whatsoever to help her and Facebook will certainly not donate money in exchange for sharing her photograph. The message is just one more in a long line of such hoaxes. The people who create these hoaxes use stolen pictures of sick children without the permission of their parents. Please report the image and do not like or share it. Please read the detailed analysis below for more information on how you can help stop these nasty hoaxes.

Detailed analysis and references below example.

Example

She's suffering form cancer! Facebook has promised to give $1.20 Dollars on each share! Please, share and make it.

Detailed Analysis

This Facebook driven message, which features a photograph of a young girl in a hospital bed, claims that you can help the child just by sharing her picture. The message claims that Facebook will donate $1.20 to help the girl in her battle with cancer each time a user clicks the share button on the photograph.

However, the claims in the message are heinous nonsense. Sharing the child's picture will do nothing whatsoever to help her. Facebook will NOT donate so much as a cent to support this or any other child (or animal) just because someone shared a message. In fact, the message is just one more in a long series of such hoaxes. It is currently unclear who the child in the picture is, although archived references suggest the image was posted to a Spanish language website in 2007 and may depict a patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant operation. The cretin who created this hoax undoubtedly stole the child's picture and used it in the hoax message without the permission or knowledge of the little girl's parents or carers.

Please do not give the immoral and disgusting person who created this hoax any satisfaction by sharing or liking the message. These vile pranksters obviously derive some degree of sick pleasure out of fooling people into liking or sharing their hoaxes. They are beneath contempt and seemingly happy to exploit ill children for no other reason than to pointlessly collect likes or shares.

Sadly, this hoax is just one in a long line of Facebook hoax messages that feature a child's image without his or her parent's permission. These types of messages are NOT harmless. Often, the unauthorized circulation of such photographs causes great distress to the child's family. Sharing such hoax messages is immoral and irresponsible. And since they do absolutely zero to help the pictured children, sharing these messages is utterly pointless as well.

If you encounter one of these hoax messages, PLEASE do not share it with others. Instead, report the image to Facebook. Please do NOT comment on the photo or the wall where the photo has been posted, as this gives the hoax more unwarranted exposure because it puts the offending photo on to the news feeds/tickers of your Facebook friends.

A number of us in the hoax and scam busting community are joining forces in an attempt to curtail these nasty and damaging hoaxes. You can help by reporting these images and letting your friends know that they are hoaxes. Remember that any message that claims that money will be donated in exchange for forwarding, sharing or liking a picture is certain to be a hoax.
source:http://www.hoax-slayer.com/girl-cancer-bed-share-hoax.shtml