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Ask Parry! is a service where Parry Aftab, noted online safety and privacy expert, and Executive Director of WiredSafety.org can answer your questions about online safety, privacy and security, and help you with problems you encounter online. Anything from help finding a safe chat room for your teens, to knowing what to do if the item you bought at auction doesn't arrive as promised.
All of us are excited to send Grandma and Grandpa the photo of our child winning the local sports trophy or getting the debate award. Dog-eared clippings from our town paper are cherished and carefully glued into scrapbooks to show our grandchildren. So what's the harm in posting the same photo at the school Web site?
First of all, a Web site isn't a local newspaper. It's available to more than 140 million people in the United States alone. And the people who might use this information to reach your children aren't neighbors who are worried about what their neighbors think. They are strangers to your family and your community. (Polly Klaas was targeted from a mailing list compiled for marketing to teenagers in a particular zip code area. Her killer bought this list of girls between certain ages and chose her at random from the list. The list contained her address, name, and age.)
Although the FBI has not yet encountered a case of a child molester targeting a child they found at a school Web site, they worry (and so do I) that someone will use this information to target a child. Just think for a moment. Children who appear on a school's Web site are at that school from 8:30 A.M. to 3 P.M. every day. It's easy to find them during those hours and when they are walking to and from school, especially if you know their name and have a printout of their photo in your hand. "Mary, can I talk to you a minute?" How many of our children wouldn't respond to someone who knew their name?
So I recommend that a school use photos of children only after they get the parents' consent, and only in groups of five or more. I also recommend that they not identify the children by name, only by the group: "Ms. Smith's fourth grade class" or the "Volleyball Club," for instance. This makes perfect sense when you think about it. We'd never let anyone post our child's photo on a highway billboard, would we? We need to think of the Internet as a giant billboard posted on the largest superhighway in the world. If we wouldn't allow something about our children to appear there, we shouldn't allow it to be posted online.