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/