The Downside of "Sharenting"

I am admittedly very guilty of this! But let's explore "Sharenting"- by definition, it is the excessive use of social media by parents to share content based on their children, this includes things like activities, location and obviously pictures. Here's something that is worth thinking about, you have a baby and with so much excitement and glee you want to share the wonderful news with family and friends- more so now because of social distancing. In your posts on Facebook and Instagram you are including baby's full name, date of birth and other vitals. Unwittingly you just shared pieces of information considered PII( Personally Identifiable Information) and the minute you hit share, you've potentially exposed baby's identity to cyber criminals. Putting together a profile is the easy part, if you google yourself, there is a very high chance that your name and address will be in the search results so now, the cyber criminal also has baby's address!

The Take Away:

1. Make sure the privacy settings on your social accounts are properly configured to keep lurking eyes (human & AI) out and lets refrain from sharing PII entirely.

2. Understand the location settings for the apps you use and make sure they are not broadcasting.

3. While CCPA, CPRA and GDPR are there to protect our privacy, it's ultimately our responsibility to not supply the efforts of cyber criminals and similarly those of marketing companies.

4. Check out this article from fast company for a deep-dive on "Sharenting" and the potential impact on your little one's digital footprint.