Everybody loves cute kid videos, right? Indeed -- but not everybody loves them for the right reasons, as Texas mom Kelli Clark discovered when she posted a video on YouTube of her then 2-year-old son dancing in the rain, wearing a diaper.
"It was at like, 56 hits for the longest time," says Clark. Then suddenly the video shot up to 3,000 hits for no apparent reason. Clark was mystified ... until she got an unpleasantly informative email from a woman in Sweden.
The woman told Kelli that the video of her son had been re-posted on a private YouTube channel featuring nude children (hence the suspicious spike in traffic). Says Clark:
"I went to look. I was totally shocked. From then, I called the FBI and they couldn't do anything about it because they weren't his videos. They were other people's videos that he had collected."
WTF?! Does this sound like a serious flaw in the system to anyone else?
Clark's only option was, unfortunately, the only option for any parent who wants to share a video of their child with family and friends and be sure they're NOT sharing it with a network of pedophiles: Clark set the video to "private."
So scary, so disgusting. My kids are too big to dance around in diapers these days, but if they were? I'd have serious misgivings about sharing those adorable moments with the digital world.
Do you ever get scared to post videos of your kids on YouTube?
Image via Luciano Meirelles/Flickr
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Comments 48
People that post to FB, please also be aware that even if you have all your settings set to private and someone uses the "SHARE" option the photo or video will then be on that persons page with whatever settings they have, which could make it public.
Yep, the same reason I, like others I see, don't post videos of my daughter on YouTube. Sick.
this is why i only put cat videos on youtube :))
About sharing Photos...in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM...how many times I have come across, at garage sales, flea markets, etc. people selling old photo albums, mail with photos in them...no one throws out anything...they give it away or sell it. Same goes for digital media now. You can buy or trade photos from others who have 'found or bought' them at garage sales or other sales...be it adults or kids...not nudes, just regular photos...of family times. What one does with them, how one sees them is up to the buyer.
So, Moral of Story...always be aware of What you Want to do with your PHOTOS...Photo Cards (as in DIgital Media) or Negatives. Or, like in the olden days...polaroids.
The other thing is simple: Never Put online ANYTHING you would be ASHAMED OF SHOWING YOUR PARENTS...if you do not mind showing them a naked pic of you at 30, kissing your boss...fine. Just remember the INTERNET Never Forgets.