Who Has Your Children's Pictures?

As parents, we all like to show off our children's accomplishments and so forth.

And with social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Yuwie, Bebo and so on it has become so much easier to share our little bundles of joy with our internet friends.

We do this quite innocently and without thought of the consequences of this simple act.

But there are dangers out there, dangers that as a parent are quite sickening and frightening.

I am here to tell you of my personal experience of such things and to warn you of the dangers of posting pictures of your young ones.

Some time ago my daughter posted a number of pictures of my 3 year old granddaughter on MySpace for her friends to see.

She received the usual comments "She is gorgeous", "Awe how cute" and it continues.

She was pleased that her friends could share in the joy of her child and that she could show them how she was growing and developing.

But then the darker side of this innocent act was thrust into our lives.

The scary side!

Recently a person who we have known for over 20 years was arrested for possessing child pornography on his computer, cell phone and having hard copies of child images.

He has also been charged with 12 counts of sexual assault on a minor.

Obviously this came as a great shock to us and was quite disturbing, considering we had known him for so long and never suspected anything like this.

But what was even more disturbing and sickening was the fact that it was found that he had taken a screen shot of my granddaughter from MySpace and downloaded onto his cell phone.

I cannot begin to tell you how that made us feel, the upset and anguish that this caused.

The knowledge that a picture of our little 3 year old girl was in the hands of a pedophile was devastating.

The fact that such an innocent act of sharing a picture with our friends could turn into this nightmare.

Obviously all images of my granddaughter were immediately removed and our friends were warned of this horrible truth.

But how many times had that image been downloaded and how many others had this happened to?

This is something we will never know, nor will we know who has them and for what purpose.

Unfortunately in the world we live in today the simple act of sharing a picture of your child can be turned into something sordid and disgusting.

So be warned when sharing pictures of your loved ones, be careful what and how much you share.

But more importantly, be very careful where you share it.

What you and I may consider an innocent act someone else is there to exploit it.