Why Facebook is NOT Stealing Your Private Baby Photos

Is Facebook Stealing Baby Photos?

Rumours are circulating that pages entitled “Babies” or “New Borns” or with similar titles, are stealing photos of babies/children from facebook members and that Facebook is then making the private photos public.

44Pictured above: The new borns facebook page 

The rumours/concerns are entirely misplaced, but confusion has spread far and wide.

The Pages in question, are “About” Pages (or “Community Pages”). Such Pages are not administered by anyone, rather they are created by Facebook based on various search terms 

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It is important to realise that when you navigate to this Page you will see images of babies that are relevant to you, the individual. This means everyone gets a personalised experience when they visit the Page and will see images of either their own children or children of their friends.
So if you go to the Page and see your own child this does not mean that a stranger will see the same thing. A stranger will see images of children relevant to them- i.e. their children or children of their friends.

Of course many Facebook users see photos of children that they know and wrongly assume that the Page has “stolen” the photos and that they can be seen by anyone who visits the Page, which is not true at all.

There are thousands and thousands of About Pages on facebook that cover a range of topics and terms. Pictured below is a similar page but about football:

foot

What Type of Page’s are they ? – Community Pages

Facebook has a special type of page called a Community Page which it uses to display generic information relating to general topics. A community page is on a topic too broad to have one particular editor or owner. Examples include town names and topics like “Toast” or “Flowers”. These pages do not do updates, but can be “liked”.

Usually a community page will have an extract from Wikipedia giving a brief description of the topic. It will also show friends who like that topic (this can also be because they have listed it as an interest in their profile.) The page will sometimes show an aggregated feed of any post or photo relating to that topic that has been mentioned by your group of friends or posted to a group you are a member of.

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These pages pull their content – both Wikipedia and feeds – automatically. They cannot be edited or changed other than by Facebook. The only thing that can be edited by a user is to suggest a change in the category the age is in or to suggest an official related page (for instance to associated the Coca Cola official page with the Coca Cola community page.)

Basically, each user who goes to the Page will see different images – images that are accessible to the individual. It’s perhaps easier to think of it as an alternate News Feed that only shows photos of children (or at least what Facebook thinks are photos of children) posted by your Facebook friends.

Who Else Can See My Baby Or My Friend’s Baby Photos?

The only people who can see these photos on the Baby Page (or any other similar page) are those who you allow to in your privacy settings.

For instance:

  • If you post a photo with the word baby in its description with the “friends only” privacy setting on, anyone who is your friend will see that baby photo on the baby page.

  • If you post a photo with the word baby in its description and your content is set to “public”, all your friends and anyone who follows you (if you have the follower option enabled) will be able to see the photo.

  • If you post a photo with the word baby in its description to any group you are a member of, any person who is a member of that group will be able to see the photo on the community page.

To understand how content aggregation works, take a look at your newsfeed. You can see dozens of updates from friends – but only you and that person’s friends can see those updates. Essentially, this community page is like a “newsfeed” of all your friend’s baby photos.

Don’t worry – your images can only be seen by those who you’ve set to see them in your privacy settings, or those who are in groups you’re a member of where you have posted personal photos!

Worth noting is that photos that are set to public could possibly end up showing on these Pages (resulting in a user seeing babies that are not known to them) so make sure your privacy settings are correct !

So there is no need to worry. Facebook aren’t making your baby photos public and no Pages are stealing your photos (at least in this manner). Thus circulating this rumour is completely pointless.

But regardless of that, photos of your children DO NOT need to be on a public setting, even if they are “just” your cover photos. Protect your children !

The Internet, and social networking sites like Facebook, are perfect platforms for spreading untruths, misinformation, rumor and propaganda. Thousands of inaccurate, exaggerated, deceptive or just plain false messages are circulated every single day.

Facebook Security Settings

How do I edit the privacy settings for my photo albums?

To edit the privacy settings for photo albums you’ve posted:

  1. Go to your timeline and click on the Photos section

  2. Click the Albums tab

  3. Use the audience selector tool under each album to control who can see your photos

A few important notes:

  • The privacy setting for your Cover Photos album is always public.

  • If there’s a photo of you in an album that someone else posted, only the person who posted it can change the album privacy. If you don’t like the photo, you can remove a tag or escalate the issue.

  • If you share a high resolution photo or album with someone, that person will be able to download those photos.

  • Unlike other photo albums you create, you can choose an audience for individual photos in your Timeline Photos and Mobile Uploads albums. Each time you post a new photo, you pick who sees that photo using the audience selector.

Who can see tagged photos on a Page?

People will only be able to view a tagged photo on a Page if they are already able to see it based on its privacy setting. Tagging a Page in a photo doesn’t change the privacy setting for that photo

How does tagging a Page in a photo affect the photo’s privacy setting?

Tagging a Page in a photo doesn’t change photo privacy. People will not see your photo on the Page unless they are already able to see it based on its privacy setting

Some photo albums allow me to adjust the privacy setting for individual photos. How do I do this?

Photos you upload to your Profile Pictures, Timeline Photos or Mobile Uploads albums allow you to select the audience for each individual photo.

To adjust the privacy settings of photos you’ve already posted to these albums, simply:

  1. Go to your timeline and click on the Photos section and go to the Album tab.

  2. Open the album where the photo is.

  3. Click on the photo you want to edit.

  4. Once the photo is expanded, the current audience of the photo will appear in the upper right corner (ex: if the photo’s privacy is set to public, you will see the  icon). Click on the icon and select the new audience you want to share the photo with.

How to Protect Your Private Information on Facebook

ID thieves could use Facebook to retrieve data. You should try to be extremely secure and private, and sharing as little as possible, but if you want to network, that defeats the purpose. Basic measures (accessible in preferences) that won’t hurt your openness ability means hiding some information that people don’t need.

Facebook is an extremely popular place to share photos with friends and family. Unfortunately, if you don’t adjust your privacy settings, you may also be sharing them with the rest of the Internet as well. This simple tutorial will show you how to control who can see your Facebook photos. You can share them with your friends, with your friends’ friends, or just with a small group of people. And you can set different permissions on each folder, so that you can share pictures of your office party with co-workers, and pictures of your kids with just your relatives.

Log in to Facebook, then click Account. It is located on the top right (next to Profile). Click Privacy Settings.

Decide how private you want your profile to be. Click on each tab—everyone, friends of friends, friends only, recommended, and custom. Look at the dots for each one—the dot shows who can see that aspect

Here, the first three things can be seen by everyone, the second three by friends of friends, and the rest only by friends.

Here, the first three things can be seen by everyone, the second three by friends of friends, and the rest only by friends.

Uncheck the “Let friends of people tagged in my photos and posts see them” box. This ensures that only your friends are able to see posts and photos that you tag.

If you are happy with one of the preset privacy settings, click Apply These Settings in the bottom right corner. If you are not, continue reading to learn how to customize your privacy settings

Click the Customize Settings link under the box you just unchecked. This will allow you to further edit your Facebook settings.

Decide how private you want certain things to be by selecting from the drop-down menu.

Hide certain people or networks from seeing your information. To do so, click Customize from the drop down menu. Then, choose “Friends Only,” uncheck any networks you don’t want to see your photos (remember that when this is checked it means thatanyone in the network can see that piece of information, not just your friends in the network), and type in the names of any person on your friends list you don’t want to see your info.

Make a certain piece of information visible to only a couple people. To do so, click Customize from the drop down menu. From the next drop down menu, choose Specific People…Then, type in the name of the people you want to be able to see the info. As long as your networks are unchecked, only those to whom you grant permission will be able to see that piece of information.

Change your photo privacy settings. Click on Edit Privacy Settings for existing photo albums and videos at the bottom of the Things I Share section

Choose the appropriate settings for each album. Use the drop down menu as you did for the previous steps. Click the Back to Settings button in the upper left corner when you are done.

Preview your profile. This feature allows you to view your own profile as if you were someone else. It will help you make sure that they can only see what you want them to. To do so, click Preview My Profile in the upper right corner

Type in the name of the person’s view you want to check and press enter.

 Click Back to Privacy Settings to make any necessary changes. Then enjoy your newly secure Facebook profiles

    • Do not give out your personal information to anyone, even your friends and people you know without permission from your parents/guardians/teacher/carers first. Personal information includes:When you add an application, you are trusting the developer of the application with your data. The best solution (apart from not adding any applications at all, or not being on Facebook) is to not put any sensitive information on Facebook, including correct birthdays and other personal data that could be used in identity theft.

      • Your telephone and mobile numbers.

      • Your home address – If anyone asks where you live or you want to say where you live just give the town or region.

      • The name of your school/workplace/college/university and that goes for your parents, friends and family members ones too.

      • Names of your parents and family members.

      • Any bank and financial information e.g. credit card number etc.

      • Car registration number, National insurance number.

      • Private medical information and medical history (especially intimate information) about you, your family and friends. Telling someone that you suffer from a migraine, had a cold, flu and non intimate operations such as hand surgery is fine. It’s fine to tell someone you went to the doctors, if they ask why, just give a honest but concise answer e.g. I went for an injection, had some tests, check-up, but you don’t need to tell the whole details. If you have a disability or medical condition, be careful of who you tell, sometimes it is best to just tell family and close friends only.