Privacy and the Robot

Privacy. It’s one of those serious topics I try to stear clear of on this site full of Space Camp pictures and really bad jokes. But, for some reason, yesterday I had an epiphany. Maybe it was because someone posted 60+ photos to a certain shared site from my drunken birthday fiesta. Maybe it was because I read this essay over at Rockstarmommy. Or maybe it was because I was up most of the night as a police helicopter circled my neighborhood looking for who knows what. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because I was so freaked out about the police helicopter and it’s hour of shining a spotlight right over our house that I actually let my husband show me how to load his gun in case of an emergency. And I effing HATE guns! And I HATE that he has one in my house. But I was so scared, I just let him show me. Ah, the joys of living in an urban area.

Anyway, I started thinking about all I do to keep my family safe. We have smoke alarms, burgler alarms, carbon monoxide detectors and a Rottweiler. Trent keeps a bat by the front door and a baton by the bed. We babyproofed the whole house and keep a video monitor by our bed in case Lu wakes up during the night. When I head in to work at an un-godly hour, I get a security guard to walk me from my parking garage to my office building.

But then, I hop on my computer and upload hundreds of photos for anyone and their mother to see. I upload pictures of Christmas, Easter and Labor Day. I upload pictures of my daughter, my nieces, my nephews. And yesterday I started to think about how these photos of those gorgeous kids could be used in the hands of the wrong person. And what was I doing to keep that from happening? Nothing. Actually, I should have just said, “Hello, creepy internet prowler, would you like a picture of my daughter in her swimming suit? Maybe just in a diaper? Great, enjoy!”

So, in lieu of my strange awakening, I’m trying to decide what to do with all of my thousands (seriously, thousands) of photos that I have stored on Flickr. Now, I love Flickr, and I’m going to continue to use it, but I’m just not sure that anyone who wants to login or search the site should be able to do a search for “baby” and have a picture of Lucy pop up. So yesterday I took drastic measures and made all 2500+ of my photos on Flickr private. When pictures are set to private, you have to login to Flickr and be denoted as one of my “Friends” to see them (you can join Flickr, and add me to your Friends by clicking here – if you already have an account on Yahoo!, then you can use that same ID for Flickr by clicking here…damn corporate sellouts).

I know this is just one more site for people to belong to, and, trust me, I get it. Between MySpace and Facebook and my four internet-based email accounts, I’m just about sick of signing up for crap. So, after a few more hours of deliberation, I came to a compromise. I’m going to keep pictures public if they can be found in my Most Recent category or My Favorite Photos category (these can be found on the left hand side of this page). Once a picture is moved from Most Recent, I will probably make it private, unless it is a Favorite Photo that I’d like more people to see.

I’m not sure if this is the final solution, actually, I will probably revise this a zillion times before I decide what to do permanantly. I just think that Lu and the other kiddos in my life didn’t ask to be a part of this site, and it isn’t fair for me to post photos of them when they can’t object. As for myself and the other adults around me? Well, if you don’t want your picture up here, you’d better let me know, and I’ll take them down right away. If you don’t care, then be prepared for photos of yourself doing the robot on the internet for everyone to see.

Update: Looks like I’m not the only one freaking out about this topic…it’s got the whole Internet up in arms.