Anyone who knows me even in passing knows I take lots of pictures – and mostly pictures of people’s faces. People that know I have kids often ask me why I don’t post pictures of kids – my own or anyone else’s. The main reason is around kids’ privacy. I just don’t feel comfortable posting their pictures publicly.

A few weeks ago there was a surprise party for my brother-in-law James. There were 30 or so people at his house and I thought it would be nice to get shots of everyone there for an album of the day. Since my kids were there I took their photographs as well. I put all the pictures into an album on Facebook and also added them to Flickr.

Within an hour the picture of my 11 year old daughter had almost 100 views. Many of them came from anonymizers. I’m sorry, but that’s creepy. I took the photo down right away and am going back to my strict policy of not posting kids. There are just too many odd balls out there for me to be comfortable.

I hate having to limit what I do or to feel paranoid about the pictures I take or post but that’s something I guess you have to do sometimes if you want to be active online. Have other people had similar experiences?

Courtesy Over The River.