Parent Savers
Internet Safety: Overexposing Our Kids

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Please be advised, this transcription was performed from a company independent of New Mommy Media, LLC. As such, translation was required which may alter the accuracy of the transcription.

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DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: From the moment they’re born mostly parents want to tell the world about their kids. And the internet makes it really easy to share those moments instantly, but at what cost? Do you really know who’s viewing your photos and status updates? I’m Detective Damian Jackson of the Escondido Police Department’s Family Protection Unit and the San Diego Internet Crimes against Children Task Force. And today we have some great tips to help keep you and your family safe online. This is Parent Savers.

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SUNNY GAULT: Welcome to Parent Savers, broadcasting from the birth education center of San Diego. Parent Savers is you’re online on the go support group for parents with infants and toddlers. And I am your guest host Sunny Gault. Thanks again to all of our loyal listeners who join us every time we release a new episode.

And for those of you who continue these conversations with us on Facebook and Twitter, we love talking to you. And if you want to get even more parent savers content be sure to check out our special club. Also our parent savers app is available so you can listen to all the episodes wherever you go and that is available on IOS, on windows and on Google Play. So, Colina, our producer is now going to tell you a little bit more about our virtual panellist program. Colina

COLINA CAROTHERS: Alright. So, if you can’t make it with us here in the studio, we love to still have your input. And you can do that online. So, we will be keeping an eye on our website. If you have a question or want to put your input on any of the discussions that you hear here on parent savers you can do that. You can follow us either on Twitter, like Sunny said you can post there. And you can also post to our facebook using the hashtag

SUNNY GAULT: Parentsaversvp

COLINA CAROTHERS: Yes

SUNNY GAULT: Which stands for virtual panellist

COLINA CAROTHERS: Yes

SUNNY GAULT: Like it kind of works that. Okay, thanks Colina. Okay let’s meet the parents that are joining us here in the studio. We’re welcoming back some familiar faces. You guys know me, I’m Sunny. I own new mommy media and I’m on a lot of these shows. I have four children of my own. My oldest Sayer is four years old. Urban is my middle guy, he’s two. And then I have identical twin girls Ainsley and Addison who are turning one in like a couple of weeks. I can’t believe it, it’s crazy. Time flies. And Johner is back on the show. Johner, welcome back to parent savers

JOHNER RIEHL: It’s like riding a bike

SUNNY GAULT: I know, right?

JOHNER RIEHL: So, yeah my name is Johner. I used to be the host of parent savers and now I’m just a PR guy freelance writer. On my business card it says PR Robasky in case

SUNNY GAULT: Oh I like that

JOHNER RIEHL: So that’s, we kind of go with non-traditional titles, that’s what I do we interacted PR, interactive entertainment PR. I have three boys, a seven year old, a five year old and a three year old and we are all online constantly. Their lines are on line too so really definitely let’s talk a little more about this topic

SUNNY GAULT: Totally. Scott. Welcome back

SCOTT KILIAN: Glad you asked. It’s god to be back. My name is Scott, I’ve got a four year old boy, Alex. And you know this topic is pretty interesting to me because he’s not online. I have limited online stuff I don’t really have a facebook account or anything like that. But with technology changing you know, and probably his interest on that would be interesting to see, would begin to pay attention to

SUNNY GAULT: Absolutely. And Colina, we already met you but say Hi again

COLINA CAROTHERS: Hi. Yes, so, uhm, I have one son. He is seventeen months. So he’s definitely not online but I am a lot. I’m online for of course parent savers. And then we have, you know a lot of my family’s out of town. So we used facebook to keep in touch and you know, instagrams out there. And, but you see a lot of scary stuff in the news especially recently with kids pictures and in things like that. So this should be interesting

SUNNY GAULT: Absolutely. Well thank you guys for joining us today

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SUNNY GAULT: Okay so before we kick off our show today. We are talking about news headline that probably has most parents concerned about. We heard a lot of these nanny cams and things getting caught on nanny cams, this is another one that came out just this month. And this is about the Fontana twins if you’ve been kind of checking out the headlines.

So, basically there are some twins, one year old twins as well as an eight year old boy that are part of this family. The mom has a nanny that watches the kids at their house. And one day the eight year old son tells his mom that the nanny, kind of have this attack moment and was shaking one of the twins, the one year old twin. And the mom, of course was concerned, she actually went, they had a nanny cam.

I don’t know it must have been hidden, I doubt the nanny knew that she was being recorded. But I think they were just kind of using it as a safety net. They didn’t really have any concerns until the eight year old came forward. Mom looked at the tape. You can actually see the tape online. She’s very much shaking this child. Also covering the child, both twins I think with her hand over their mouth when they’re crying. It’s very scary.

So, mom of course confronted the nanny and nanny said she made a “mistake”. And mom said, this is more than a mistake, you’re fired. And then she also had the nanny arrested on suspicion of child abuse and now, you know I’m not sure exactly where it stands you know with that but nanny is not in jail per se. she is out and the scary thing is that in this kind of in limbo period. You know, she could technically apply for another nanny job. I should say that the mom found the nanny on a popular website where you can find nanny’s and things like that. And that site has come out to say, we’re going to support these parents in whatever way we can.

They’ve been really great about saying listen, this is not okay and it’s impossible for these sites to vet everybody right? And so, but they want to help. They wanted to help authorities, they want to help the parents whenever possible and they came out and denounces and said this is not what our site is about. So, anyways that’s how the mom found the nanny originally. So I want to kind of get your guys take on this. We all have to use sitters, we have to use nanny’s from time to time. Are you guys concerned about this? Have you thought about installing a cam? Where do you guys stand with this? Johner?

JOHNER RIEHL: I, there’s a lot who want to hear that story. I hadn’t heard it before. There’s a lot of sort of, what would I do in that situation

SUNNY GAULT: You’re right

JOHNER RIEHL: Moments. I mean, from the starting of just having a nanny cam and I think that because it was from that third party service now that’s really a friend of the family or girl down the street, that really glad that they had it. But then the whole confronting and then firing and then pressing charges. And it’s something that I think; we haven’t used a lot of outside third party unfamiliar to the family people for child care. We’ve been able to find either neighbour’s kids or local kids but I think that once you’re going outside of your circle, the nanny cam is a good start to be able to catch. And just breaks my heart to hear about the shaking

SUNNY GAULT: Oh my gosh I know. And to see the footage it’s unreal

JOHNER RIEHL: I don’t think I want to watch it

SUNNY GAULT: No probably not

SCOTT KILIAN: Yeah Johner I mean what you say, it’s stuff like this which is precisely what’s fundamentally why we don’t use outside care providers. We have, we’re fortunate to have, you know my parents, they’re here and also I just remember when Alex was young there was a Andrea’s work, like a work friend of hers. Was, you know, was very large Mexican family. It was the only place that Alex would go. I mean, he, I mean and the way they held him it was perfect. And so,

JOHNER RIEHL: Not everyone has that luxury

SCOTT KILIAN: Not everyone has a luxury but at the same time though, you know we’ve had to sacrifice, you know, not going out, not doing like fun things because, you know for that reason, but its stuff, but I mean it’s a small price to pay for you know when you read a headline like this

SUNNY GAULT: Detective Jackson is our expert today and I wanted to ask you, so what happens, obviously its better if we have these stuff on camera right? I mean doing literally hand this over to authorities and say do something. I mean here it says that she was arrested on suspicion of child abuse, what do police do with that?

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Well you can say the whole suspicion part of it comes out because it’s not, you know, in the infant stages of an investigation, you can’t really jump to conclusions because

SUNNY GAULT: Right

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: you still have to rely on the facts but there’s no, there’s certainly no disputing video evidence you know in that case, most of the times in the cases we handle, we don’t have video evidence. So in the rare occasion that you do, I mean that’s like gold for a criminal case. We have to rely on, you know the injuries to the child and you know the subsequent follow up, you know, at the hospital.

But to have it on video is huge. And I applaud the parents for doing exactly that and having that nanny cam because you know as Johner and Scott said, if you have the ability to have family and close friends help you in child care that’s fantastic and obviously the best route. But anytime you have to have somebody that’s a stranger to care for your kids, you’re, you’re kind of rolling the dice because nobody’s going to parent or care for your child like you will. So

JOHNER RIEHL: I’m pretty sure we would not be talking about this if it weren’t for that nanny cam

SUNNY GAULT: Oh yeah

JOHNER RIEHL: Right

SUNNY GAULT: Because you wouldn’t have the evidence

JOHNER RIEHL: Yeah. It’s really compelling reason to get one of those

SUNNY GAULT: Sure

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SUNNY GAULT: Today we’re talking about over exposing our kids online. And our expert is Detective Damian Jackson with the Escondido Police Department for Family Protection Unit as well as the San Diego Internet Crime Scene Children Task Force. So, Detective Jackson, thanks for joining us today

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Thank you for having me

SUNNY GAULT: So in your opinion, are most new parents over exposing their children online? You know we’re obsessed with Facebook and Twitter and we want to tell everybody about the great little expression that our baby just made or are we overdoing it?

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Well I think to some degree, yes. And then others no, the big thing is the intent, you know. No parent I think is going out there with the intent of just blasting the world with their child. But it is an exciting time you know. I’ve got three kids of my own and there’s no, there’s no greater joy and excitement then in the new amazing things that your kids do. And you want to, you want to brag about it especially to family and friends.

And, you know, everybody has a twelve megapixel digital camera on their hip these days so you know every moment that the kids do you can capture that and upload it instantly and you know there’s certainly that, that desire there. But you know there are some concerns to come with that because if and really if you’re loading those pictures up on the social media, what I think it boils down to is just being aware of what you’re settings are on those social media outlets. So that it can’t be, you know used and exploited by everybody on the face of the earth

SUNNY GAULT: Okay. So let’s dive in to that a little bit more. What are some of the common ways we tend to overexpose our kids. We, I mean it probably depends on the site we’re using right? But we’re mainly probably talking about photos, status updates, telling people where we’re at. Am I hitting all the right points here?

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Certainly. Yeah. If you know, the photo sharing and you know, location of days where you’re at putting your kid’s schools, the names of your kids schools and post and then “hey, we’re at” you know such and such school, for, you know ,this event today and you know posting pictures of your kids.

And you know what I think a lot of parents don’t realizes is you know with any picture, once you post it to the internet, it’s out there and it’s gone forever and anybody can get it and anybody can use it and that ends up too including pictures of your children. And I’ve had numerous cases that I have investigated that or we’ve had people that set up fictitious social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. And they’ll set up this fake account and create this kind of fictional family.

And part of that fictional family are pictures of children that are in no way shape or form related to them. And then they’ll, they’ll report them as their own kids. Or, so think about as you’re doing all these things with your family and you’re taking pictures of it and uploading these events and given the narration in to them. Somebody else can be copying that information and putting it under their own fake page to represent themselves as you know somebody completely different using your kids as a prop

SUNNY GAULT: So why would they do that? What’s the advantage of that? Are they luring people in for their own, or are they just want to make believe they have their own family?

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Yes to both. Yeah. I mean, it’s crazy to think about that yeah there’s people out there that do that. If you think of you know there were many cases where people, women have kind of faked their pregnancy for some time and then they tell family members and friends “oh I’m pregnant this and that” and if they can’t stay and these are people that aren’t right there with them and on their own city block but say you have relatives that are on other states, you know, you can kind of create this fake family for yourself and present yourself of having a new born or a toddler. And you know, anything under the sun. It’s, if you can imagine that people are doing it then that’s the scary part

COLINA CAROTHERS: Are you guys surprised by this? That people kind of create their own families online?

SUNNY GAULT: Even if they don’t intend to act on it

SCOTT KILIAN: What this reminds me of is the charger player [inaudible] and the whole cat fishing. It’s you know where he had this, you know, this online relationship with somebody that he never saw and that he was harassed about it probably still as to this day.

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Yeah well definitely. And in, I’ll take it a step further and there’s one case in you saying that really jumped out of me. And this one case in particular that we worked on where this, this child predator was using basically this fictitious family that he created on social media to connect with other paedophiles for the purpose of sharing child pornography files.

So he would you know, contact these guys and say “hey I have photos to share, you know, here’s a picture of my daughter. If you show me pictures of yours, I’ll, you know, I’ll show you pictures of mine” and they would lure them with pictures, just generic run in the mail pictures that they would get off of somebody’s unsecured facebooks. So, it’s, it’s like I said if you can imagine it people are doing it

JOHNER RIEHL: So yes Sunny, you asked if it surprises me? I think the answer is like, yes and no. I’m always surprised that those people exist but I know that they’re kind of there

SUNNY GAULT: Right

JOHNER RIEHL: Usually in my bubble, it hasn’t been burst by that or have to worry about it

SUNNY GAULT: Right

JOHNER RIEHL: But I know, and hearing stories from Detective Jackson, knows that they’re there and that’s why I think there are, there’s ways that you can approach this. There’s either, and I think that’s what we’re talking about is quit doing this on social media, quit doing anything or find ways to be safe.

SCOTT KILIAN: When like, Detective I just, you brought this up earlier about as far as looking at settings of the social media applications that are used, is there a way to lock down the settings of that only a select you know group of people can view this stuff or is it just kind of you’re still rolling the dice with that too

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: No there’s definitely ways that you can shut it down. And you know, Facebook is the site that uses brain, video you know world where everybody these days has a facebook account. And I don’t want to, you know be the doom and gloom and say you can no longer take a picture of your kids and post it online. That’s, that’s certainly not the case but you know if you take some proactive steps with your Facebook account, you know, you can be and feel completely safe. There’s no doubt about that. It just takes, you know some proactive work on your part to make sure those settings are you know in place.

JOHNER RIEHL: I would just say, I mean what’s interesting to me is sort of like how we got here. I remember for our oldest whose seven years old and we have a five and a three. Facebook wasn’t, hadn’t really reached critical mass when he was a baby. And then I remember Christina was on Facebook when Whitaker our second one was born. And she talks about how, you know she felt so depressed and isolated a little bit with the first one and then having the social networks and being able to connect with people really made her feel like she wasn’t alone and even new shows like our new mommy media is kind of designed around the same premise of bringing a community together online and so I think that the sort of is how we’ve gotten there is there’s such positive intentions to do it but we have to be careful of the negative stuff.

COLINA CAROTHERS: Yeah, and that you bringing up the fake families thing that reminded me of a something that was kind of big not too long ago with instagram those having an issue, people having an issue with and there’s still stuff going on where they had people taking other people’s, you know unsecured kids pictures and using them for like virtual role play. And that range from I know it’s weird range everywhere from you know “oh these are my pretend kids and oh we’re going to the park and they’d use somebody’s picture at the park. And so [inaudible] as sinister as using them in very, you know paedophile type

SUNNY GAULT: Wow

COLINA CAROTHERS: Situations describing like what was going on and it was, it’s scary to think that someone would even take a picture of your kid and pretend that they would be, you know it’s disturbing and so I think that’s another, another thing you have to be aware is they can do stuff like that

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Yes it’s amazing that that no this is not surprising. But it’s shocking that it’s not surprising

SUNNY GAULT: Right. And is the danger Detective Jackson that they’re going to take this from a fantasy role type thing and act on it, is that the progression, I mean yes it’s creepy, okay. But if you’re not it’s kind of like, if you’re not hurting anybody, whatever you’re do in your own. I mean yes you’re taking my child’s images and I’m not okay with that but what am I really going to do unless you’re hurting somebody

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Sure and in what it is, it’s an escalation of behaviour. You go from thinking about it to now you’re creating a facebook page or you’re creating this fictitious persona, and now you’re importing photos of complete strangers children and you’re reporting them as your own. And then you know so where do you go from that level. Now you start contacting other people that are, you know proliferating child pornography and now you’re communicating with them. And you’re using this fake family you created to illicit you know and solicit you know, responses and images from that other person that you’re talking to so it’s a slippery slope, that’s for sure

SUNNY GAULT: Okay. Well when we come back we’re going to talk about ways we can improve our privacy online and better protect our families. We’ll be right back

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SUNNY GAULT: Welcome back, today we’re talking about over exposing our kids online with Detective Damian Jackson. And you know I always get into this discussion with my husband about are social media really to blame, you know is the blame more on the parents and maybe not blame but the responsibility does that lie more on the parent or should we just say, out with social media altogether.

I don’t how, first of all I don’t know how you do that. I don’t think your, you know we’re on this trajectory like Johner was talking about I don’t think it’s going to stop. I think we’ve got to use the good and monitor the bad or figure out how to, you know, use that appropriately. But, you know what are your thoughts on it Detective Jackson, is social media the enemy?

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: No, certainly not and the biggest thing is no matter how much anyone fights against it, it’s not going to go away. So, it’s here to stay. The internet is here to stay, you know are wired in lives are here to stay forever and it’s a matter of not running from it but you know embracing it and being safe while you’re doing it and using it for, you know the genuine purpose of, I think it was intended for.

But realizing that there are, you know other various activities out there that are associated with it that you know you have to be aware of and you know knowledge is power. To me social media is you know something like Facebook, it’s a vehicle, it’s a vehicle for information and it requires judgement and management and prudence and you know if you, if you give someone the keys to a race car who has never driven a race car before, you know, they’re going to be in for a wild ride and danger.

But, if you train them and get them up to speed on it then you can handle that vehicle accordingly. So, it’s really just about you know managing the use of it

SUNNY GAULT: So let’s talk about some tips, some ways that we can try to improve our privacy online whilst being able to share and connect with family and friends. Some of the stuff we’ve talked about a little bit in the first half but I still want to reiterate it. So we talked about keeping information to a minimum. You mentioned just watch what’s in the photograph, you know of you taking you know that you’re taking of your kids you mentioned like school emblems, logos, identifying factors, is that we’re primarily talking about

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: That’s certainly part of it, you know one of the, one of the things we do in our case work in working child exploitation is we’ll have a lot of cases where we might have images of children in circumstances and they’re not identified. So we might have a child who’s a victim that we have not been able to accurately identify at that time. And some of the things that we’ll look in at that case are things in the background.

What are their logos, whether it’s a sweatshirt that the child has on and has a school logo, that will help us kind of pin point the geographic location or that child victim is and know we can start from there. So, that’s one element of it. And you know when the moment comes up and you take a picture, you can’t, you know before you hit you know snap the shutter, you can’t go okay well what are they wearing, what’s my backdrop, what’s this, what’s so you can’t process that much information obviously.

But, you know look at the photo maybe before you post it and just look for those things before you just instantly share that information. You know, that’s certainly one way of doing that.

JOHNER RIEHL: I feel like in my Facebook you know I see a lot of, I see a lot of parents take different strategies with what they share about their kids as well. For me, I’m okay in putting my kids names out there. Some of them I see just using initials

SUNNY GAULT: Right

JOHNER RIEHL: Or maybe both. Some of them just generic nicknames like, my beasty boy and my beasty boy number 2. And I think that some parents choose to control what information they’re putting out. They want to put out the cute pictures or the tooth fary came but they don’t, they really are protective about the names of their kids

SUNNY GAULT: What’s your take on that Detective Jackson as far as, because I’ve seen that a lot with bloggers, too. They’ll expose, not in a bad way, but they’ll share their lives online, but, they’ll say Baby Jay or whatever and they’ll use like an initial or a fake name, does that have a tendency to help when you don’t mention. For me, I mean, I’m certainly not the demographic that goes out there stalking people trying to figure out what their kids names are. But for me that’s almost an opportunity. It’s like “oh they don’t want people to know” it makes me more inquisitive. It does doesn’t it?

JOHNER RIEHL: You don’t want me to know, I want to find out

SUNNY GAULT: Yes exactly. But does it help from a police perspective?

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Well you I need to talk afterwards. No, you know, it really boils down to personal preference. Obviously in the nature of work that I’m in, I’m a little more secretive and maybe, you know, neurotic. And other people would think in that case. So for me, personally, I don’t, I don’t post my child’s, you know, personal information even their names. And a lot of times all this limited to the fact that I have three kids you know without necessarily saying you know, what sex they are, it just.

You know, that’s just my personal preference. But, you know, we kind of go back to and you know how I feel about Facebook and you know the settings and who your friends are and who they’re not, you know, we can, we can definitely go on a litany of discussion about that. But really you can feel safe and secure and putting that information out on social media. As long as you limit who is exposed to your, to your page or who are you sharing that information with.

If you’re really concerned about, you know, racking up of a four digit number of friends, you know that follow you. You know, then you’re really, you’re throwing your information out there with a shotgun. But if, if you limit it to it and you limit your friends and you’re posting to only those people that you genuinely know, then, then you can feel pretty safe and secure with that

SCOTT KILIAN: That’s interesting you bring that up cause I have a quick question for you, isn’t there a way to kind of back door, say you were a parent that didn’t want to have your kid’s names out there and you’re connected to some friends, shouldn’t they you know tag a photo and say this is a picture of, you know, with your kid’s name on it? And then

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: They could. Well one of the settings of Facebook in particular is you can allow whether people can tag you or not. And they might tag you in a photo but then that gets sent to you and you have to agree to it before it can actually get posted. Yeah and so those are some of the things, and I wish there, I wish more people would take the time to, you know, that are using Facebook to really explore those settings and security options that you do have because and that’s when I say you can, you can use those things and feel pretty comfortable any information you’re putting off there that’s going to be safe

JOHNER RIEHL: I feel like for Facebook specifically, they really took it, a lot of criticism about like three years ago about the privacy settings. And they’ve really taken steps. And it’s a lot easier now. But there’s still there’s stuff you have to dig around and find out. But I know that even with post and pictures beyond the settings, it’s pretty easy to change who you’re sharing them with.

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: And even in those settings you can, there’s a feature in there where you can pull up, you know, you can go down the list of your friends. And you can see exactly how your page and your postings appear to that person individually. And that, that’s a great feature because you know and I’ll be perfectly frank with you and hopefully none of my friends are listening here but there are, there are, there are some people that you might to, you know like for family.

For immediate family, I’ll share pretty much anything because they know it already. But if it’s say something that I know decently but it, you know, I don’t see them every day and we’re not, you know intimately involved in each other’s lives. You know, I might limit some of that information that’s posted after that. And it’s, you know, that’s just maybe in safe

SUNNY GAULT: I think the important thing to realize here is all that stuff we’re talking about is good. It takes extra effort to do that. You know what I mean; you got to setup the groups. You’ve got to define everybody. I was talking to Detective Jackson a while ago and he encouraged me to look at my Facebook friends and say, who is you actually friends with here? Are you really, like you said, are you really trying to bulk up your numbers here? Or do you, you know, do you really know these? Have you met these people in real life? Like that’s kind of my defining factor. If I’ve met you in real life, I think you’re a friend. I consider you a Facebook friend. And so, I probably got rid of like three hundred people that was when I emailed you after, I’m like “hey I got rid of many people”

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: I was so proud of you

SUNNY GAULT: But it’s true because I’m one of those people that I know I’m not going to take the time to go through and label things as these are my close friends. This is my family , I just I don’t have time to do it. My rule overall, because I also don’t trust the sites because I feel like they could change. They can change whatever they want to change okay? And it’s up to them and then you’re exposed.

Now there might be a lot of media friends that you’re around that to prevent them from doing that but it’s their product, they can do what they want with it. So I have a rule because I do a lot of stuff online, all these shows that we do and everything, and my rule is, if I don’t want everyone in the world to know about it, I don’t say it. I don’t put it out there. And I think as a general rule, it may seem really simple but for me like that’s how I know. And it makes it more simple for me because I’m just like, okay I don’t worry about privacy settings, I don’t have to worry about this.

Don’t say it if you don’t want the world to know. Don’t send an email if you don’t want the world to know. And that’s, you know I’ve broken my rule a couple of times. But for the most part that’s what I tried to do

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: We all have. We all have. And you know, and in your defence, what’s, what needs to be considered in that is that you know you’re marketing, you’re marketing yourself. You’re marketing your product and the services that you provide. And in a case like that, if you’re, if you want a business or you’re promoting something that you’re actively involved in, in that case then the goal is to get as many people or follow you as possible.

The goal is to hit and target as many people as you can. But, you know, my family is not a business. So I’m not promoting my family in the same way that I would. And so, you know what I would recommend in that case is someone that’s in your similar situation is then have two pages. Have one that’s a personal page and then have one that’s just solely devoted to your business. And you know, and yeah it’s a lot more work to manage both but you can have that the lineation between the two

JOHNER RIEHL: I think it’s the realization too of how you do need to treat the different social networks differently. You need to treat instagram differently with Facebook differently than Twitter because of who can access. Facebook, you can have pretty good control over who’s accessing it. But you lose that control when you go out to Instagram and Twitter or some other sites.

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Checking your settings periodically is the biggest one for me. And then whether you, you know, set a, a reminder on your phone to go off and say on the, you know, every six months I’m going to sit down and really, I’m going to spend two, three hours and just completely dive into my account and look at, look at the settings in every way possible.

And you know my favourite feature is you know, that one that shows you exactly how your, how your page appears to the public and how it appears to the people that you’ve already connected with. You know, and that, that’s, you know going in to your phone. If you’re taking pictures with your phone and then you’re using that to post off to social media. You know, check the settings on your phone as well so that you’re not including you know, your geo location on the photos as you’re posting them up.

Because you take photos with that device and it pulls out what’s called exit data and that data shows, you know the GPS coordinates for where that was taken, the date, the type of camera it was taken on. You know, so you might take a picture of your child and you know blowing up their birthday cake at the party for them at your house. And you’re posting that up to social media, come to find out if somebody was able to pull that photo down and then strip off that exit data.

Those GPS coordinates aren’t going to come right back to your, you know your dining room at your house. So they’re already going to know, you know what your child looks like, where they live. And again I don’t want to, you know be the big black cloud of [inaudible] but, but the reality is that there are savvy enough creeps out there that are looking for exactly that. And you know those proactive steps that you take will basically shut the door on them right then and there

SUNNY GAULT: You know something interesting I saw online too as I was giving tips on what to do to keep your children safe. And it said, periodically Google your child’s name and see what comes up. How does that help?

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: It helps because if, if somebody is posting your child’s name somewhere or if they’re writing anything about your child, you know by name it’ll show you where that’s popping up and then you can kind of backtrack from there. And the same thing goes with images. I don’t think a lot of people realize that images, you know if you save an image, say to your desktop and then you go into Google and you go pull up Google images and you drag that image from your desktop and drop it into search bar. It will search. Google will do a, you know a very exhaustive search and find those sites that have that picture in them

SUNNY GAULT: Really

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: Absolutely. And I mean, on the break you can try it and it’s a, it’s a fantastic feature that I don’t think a lot of people are aware of. That, you know again, that’s something that I do as well. You know, you check your, if you have an image of your child or you suspect is been used or you’ve seen it somewhere else, you can drop it into that search bar and use that function and you can find out exactly whether that image is ever been used on the internet

JOHNER RIEHL: That’s cool. That’s such a good tip too I think too to Google your kids names, that’s swell. Although then I get nervous that if you are trying to keep your kids off the grid then you’re putting them in to Google database so now they know what their name is

SCOTT KILIAN: Now the page rank is going to be high . . .

SUNNY GAULT: But we’re not talking about doing it . . .

DETECTIVE DAMIAN JACKSON: The Google truck’s parked in front of your house

SUNNY GAULT: Alright everyone, well thanks so much Detective Jackson for joining us today. For more information about ways to protect your children or if you want to learn more about Detective Jackson, visit our website www.newmommymedia.com

This conversation continues for members of our parent savers club. In our bonus content, Detective Jackson will share a specific safety tips for parents who are big time Facebook users, I know we shared some but we can get in to a little bit more of specifics. For more information about the parent savers club, visit the member’s portion of our website.

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JOHNER RIEHL: We have a listener question from Michelle. She emailed us and said, my three year old absolutely adores his nine month old baby brother. He plays with him all the time and they even sleep in the same room together. However, lately my three year old has been climbing into the crib to play with his brother at night. I’m really scared the three year old will accidentally hurt the baby. I’ve tried telling him no but that doesn’t seem to be working. What would you recommend?

SUSIE WALTON: This is Susie Walton, from The Joy of Parenting Online Course and Indigo Village. And just my question for you Michelle is where do you think he might hurt him? Like just crawling in there and falling asleep with him. I mean that’s okay but if you have a fear that he might hurt him or squish him, then you just going to have, what I would do with him, I would role play what you want from him. Like you get his norms his snuggle or play with this baby but that can only be done on his bed or any other room.

But at night time, everybody sleeps in your own room. I mean, I’m sorry everybody sleeps in their own bed. And so you just make it really clear and when you find him in the crib, you just don’t want to make him wrong for this because he loves his little baby okay? So if you find him in the bed, you just remove, you take him out of the bed, you say very little.

You just say “you know what?” I, I mean hear him the word “I” not you. I need you to sleep in your own bed. And he might say, I want to sleep with the baby. And you’re going to say “I am not comfortable with you sleeping with the baby, I want you to sleep in your bed. And I love how much you love your baby” so you want to acknowledge the love. You want to set your limits in ways that I want to sleep with baby.

First step, the most important step is to acknowledge what he just said. I know you want to sleep with baby or I know you want to be in the crib with baby and I’m not comfortable with that. So you can play with baby tomorrow, but you’re going to make baby you know, yeah, you can play with baby in the morning, right now it’s time for everybody to go to sleep in their own bed.

And you can even role play that with the three year old during the day so that they actually get what you’re talking about and then take it to action at night. Okay? Good luck and let me know how that works, if it doesn’t work I’ll give you some other ideas, yeah, thanks for calling in. Take care.

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SUNNY GAULT: That wraps up our show for today. We appreciate you listening to Parent Savers.
Don’t forget to check out our sister shows:
• Preggie Pals for expecting parents
• The Boob Group for moms who breastfeed and
• Twin Talks for parents of multiple kids.

This is Parent Savers empowering new parents.

[Disclaimer]
This has been a New Mommy Media production. Information and material contained in this episode are presented for educational purposes only. Statements and opinions expressed in this episode are not necessarily those of New Mommy Media and should not be considered facts. Though information in which areas are related to be accurate, it is not intended to replace or substitute for professional, Medical or advisor care and should not be used for diagnosing or treating health care problem or disease or prescribing any medications. If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please seek assistance from a qualified health care provider.
SUNNY GAULT: New Mommy Media is expanding our line up of shows for new and expecting parents. If you have an idea for a new series or if you’re a business or organization interested in joining our network of shows through a co-branded podcast, visit www.NewMommyMedia.com .

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