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Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

Is there any evidence that having a strong online presence under your real name increases danger to your children?

Having a strong online presence means putting up pictures of what's important to you. That means that pictures of your kids are out there and traceable to you.

Personally, I don't think that it increases any danger to kids, I use my real name and post pictures of my adorable kids all the time, but I respect those who feel differently.

> Having a strong online presence means putting up pictures of what's important to you. That means that pictures of your kids are out there and traceable to you.

It does? I have a blog, a well-used Facebook profile, an active twitter account, and I comment on Reddit and HN all the time—but the last picture of me that exists on the public internet is from 2005. All the photos I actually want to share with my family are in a shared folder in my Dropbox account.

I guess I have a strong mental separation of my public and private lives; I would never talk about my family on my blog, nor would I talk about my job on Facebook.

Interesting. I don't even try to differentiate my work and family stuff. A good story is a good story, so I share family stories at work and work stories with my Facebook friends. Flickr photos are for everyone (I even had an ad agency contact me and buy the rights to use one of my kids' pictures in an ad campaign).

Part of what the original article was talking about is that having a "real names only" policy makes it harder to keep that strong separation of public and private lives.

My wife hates Facebook - people keep on tagging her and our kids in photos, thus reversing our efforts at keeping our photos private. She only logs in so she can remove the tags.

There really should be a "Don't ever let people tag me." option in social networks.

There is an option on facebook to prevent anyone else from tagging you in their photos. Its in you account privacy setting.

Google+ lets you approve all tags.

You have to approve being tagged in Google+. Yet another reason why I'd rather see them succeed than Facebook.

When I go to tech events like SXSWi, there might be 100 photos of me generated in a single night and posted online by others. It all depends what it means for you in being hyper-active on the web and in the tech scene.

If I had a kid that I was bringing along with me occasionally, there could easily be photos of them on there too. A real danger? Probably not. But what if I had an ex with a restraining order against them, and they didn't know where I, or my kids were living? That could be a potential issue if they were name searchable, geotagged, etc.

I guess the real point is that I can't imagine all of the situations, because they probably don't apply to me right now. You can find my address, phone number, email, employment history, favorite coffee shop, online easily. Yet, I'm ok with that. Not everyone would be, and that's understandable.

I think the implication is that his children would also have to use their real names (but I don't know how the bill actually deals with minors).

So is there evidence that children are at a higher risk of being kidnapped (or some other bad thing) if their info is public? There was some tabloid scaremongering to this effect in the early days of the Internet, but there are now enough kids online that there should be enough data to confirm or refute this myth.

For most people, I doubt it. But I'm certainly glad my mother's phtotos weren't online when I was in high school. Bullying is always an issue.

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