Privacy

Recently, I have read a couple of stories about other bloggers whose pictures have been stolen from their blogs. It really is a sad and scary situation, and I would be heartbroken if it happened to me. In one incident, pictures of a lady's daughter were stolen and were being used on another blog. The person who stole the pictures was pretending that the child belonged to her. She had pretty much created a fake life and was acting like another person's child was her own. That makes me feel physically ill for that mother.

Can I tell you how sick I would be if that happened to me? I always assume that no one reads this blog anyway, so I have not really worried too much about privacy, but as I read this woman's story, I started really thinking about how upset I would be if I were in her shoes.

She had a ton of pratical tips for how to make your blog, Facebook, etc. more private, and I am putting some of those settings on this blog. Of course, nothing is fool proof, but she did say that we could at the very least keep ourselves from being easy targets.

I am also asking that we keep the baby's name off of the blog. For the purposes of the blog, she will always be Sweetpea. If you do know her real name, please don't post it in the comments section. Jonathan and I already have our real names on here, so I am not going to bother with re-writing all of my posts with nicknames, but I would like to keep the baby's name private, to protect her. Jonathan and I are the only parents she will ever have, so we have to be responsible for her safety--even now.

So much of what I write about is too precious for some random weirdo to get his hands on, so I really do want to be careful, and I hope if you blog, you will take some of these tips into consideration, too. Here are the tips:

1. Use nicknames.
2. Watermark your photos or upload them to Flikr or Shutterfly so that other people cannot steal them directly from your blog. Again, keep yourself from being an easy target.
3. Disable right clicking.
4. Change your blog settings so that people cannot find you from search engines or from the "Next Blog" feature in Blogger.
5. Do not give out the name of your child's daycare or school, and make sure it is not easily identifiable in your pictures. You do not want some people to know where to find your baby.
6. Do not post pictures of your house that would make it easy to find out where you live. Think house numbers.
7. Do not allow anonymous comments. You should know who is commenting on your blog.