Many parents see photos of their children on Facebook that they want to remove. What can you do?

It is not at all unusual that parents find unwanted photos of their children on Facebook, or that children tell their parents that there is an embarrassing or incriminating photo of them on a friend’s Facebook page that the friend won’t remove.

It is not always easy to know what to do when something like this happens. Anyone with a Facebook account may post photos, and Facebook can’t force people to remove a photo unless it violates their policy or breaks the law. Many parents and children who have experienced that unwanted photos have been posted on someone else’s account, react with both surprise and worry when they realise that there’s not a lot that can be done to remove an unwanted photo or prevent that it is forwarded to another public site.

Fortunately, you do have some options. First and foremost, it helps to know a little about how posting and finding photos of someone on Facebook works.

Tagging of photos
When someone posts a photo on Facebook, they have the possibility to “tag” the people in the picture. This means that they are identifying persons by names and are establishing links to these persons' Facebook profiles. Thus, when someone posts and tags a photo of your kid, it links the photo to your kid’s Facebook page.

In addition, if the poster's profile is public, all their pictures are searchable online and are available for anyone to see, including the photos of your kid.

For more information on Facebook, go to facebook.com and spend some time reading about how the different account and privacy settings work.

Ask politely to have the picture removed
If you discover an unwanted picture, the first thing you should do is to talk to the person who posted the photo and ask them politely to take it down. Explain that you feel that it compromises your child's safety and privacy, and that it makes you (and/or your kid) uncomfortable.

If the person who posted the photo still doesn’t want to remove it, you have some further options to prevent the photo from being publicly available.

Common Sense Media has developed 5 tips that may help you:

5 Ways to Combat Unwanted Photos on Facebook:

• Untag the photo. If you're tagged in a photo, remove the tag next to your name (you'll find the link underneath the photo). The photo will still be live on the poster's page, but it will be unlinked from your profile. Remember that only the owner of the photo and the tagged user can remove a tag.
  

• Unfriend the person. You can only tag your friends. If you're not friends with the person who uploaded the photo, their profile won't link to yours, and they can no longer tag you in photos.

• Catch it early. Set your notifications so that you are alerted when someone tags you or one of your photos. Go to the Notifications tab on the Account Settings page to set it.

• Report it. Photos containing drug use, nudity, sexually suggestive images, and violence against an individual or group violate Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Click the Report This Photo link underneath the image, and Facebook will take it down if it violates their policy.

• Wisk-it. An app called Wisk-it (which you can find on Facebook and download) lets you find all tagged photos of a user and sends a request to the poster asking them to “wisk” away an image. It requires the original poster to install the program and “scrub” away the person’s face.
  

Obviously, this problem isn’t confined to Facebook. Photos of your kid could appear on any online photo-sharing site, such as Flickr, Snapfish, Kodak Gallery and Picasa. Even though most of these sites offer very robust privacy settings, any photo that's on the Internet can be forwarded to a public site or be searchable on any search engine.

Talk to your children
Kids and Media recommends that you talk to your children about protecting their own and their friends’ privacy. Learning to respect other people's privacy is one of the most important aspects to good online behaviour. If your child doesn't want embarrassing photos of himself on someone else's page, he shouldn't post embarrassing photos of his friends either.

Read Kids and Media’s guidelines for netiquette – the unwritten rules for good online behaviour.

Source:

Common Sense Media
Photos Gone Wild!

Related articles on kidsandmedia.co.uk:

Netiquette
Good advice on pictures on the Internet