Last week, my wife delivered our first child. Among all the things that had to be done with the coming of a newborn I was overwhelmed with, the first thing I did was to write to my family about one very specific topic: our newborn’s online privacy. Being online privacy-conscious and having several family members very active on social media, I wanted to prevent something early on. After the initial euphoria of mazal tovs, I wanted to make sure that we would safeguard our own child’s online privacy — at least for a while. So I wrote a letter that I sent to both sides of the family.
“Dear Family…”
Here’s what I told them
Having a newborn is very exciting — for the whole family. Everyone wants to take pictures of he/she, and share them via any social media means possible. But because of everything that is going on with online privacy right now, I think all parents (and relatives) need to establish some common practice, with what we do with these pictures and their newborn’s social presence.
For us the adults, it’s too late. We have been posting online for too many years.
Newborns will have, at some point, a digital presence. It’s a fact. This is the world we leave in. For us, the adults, it’s too late. We have been posting online for too many years. We are being profiled and tracked each time we go online. Our information has been sold and exposed too many times for too long. The progress of artificial intelligence, especially facial recognition, and what corporations do with this information are very scary. And it is not going to get any better over time.
While we cannot prevent our newborns from having a social media profile later on if they wish, we can delay the moment (and amount) when their identity will be compromised. And this starts today by limiting what we do with their info. As a matter of fact, when I announced the birth online and then talked about our newborn, I decided not to even mention his/her name on social media — ever. Any information you put out there will be used for either profiling or by hackers.
When you post a picture of anyone online, you basically give the right to these companies to do whatever they want with that picture and the info linked to it. Because who reads the terms and conditions? Fortunately, regulations coming out like with GDPR and soon CCPA, we are slowly regaining our rights.
Until then, and until we take action, this includes marketing profiling and running it through artificial intelligence face recognition software, basically bypassing her own right to privacy before the newborn is even at an age to make that decision for himself/herself. This can never be undone, and what gets out-there online has a good chance of being out-there forever. We all have been on Facebook more or less for 10 years. Imagine the amount of data that could have been collected on you if you’ve your own parents would have posted online since you were born.
That being said exchanging on private messaging systems (like WhatsApp/Signal/Telegram) is ok, except Facebook Messenger and Skype, these are eavesdropping. Email is ok. If you already sent via Messenger or Skype, please don’t do it again. Though WhatsApp is going down big time soon in term of privacy once it merges with Facebook Messenger. So it would be better for you to switch to Signal anyway. A newborn’s online privacy should remain private.
Sometimes Love is also about how to keep it for ourselves.
The take-aways
As nowadays most of advertising and marketing is done online, the fight for personal data ownership is just starting. It starts by being part of the conversation, and aware of what is being done with your info, if you agree to it. “Sharenting” is an epidemic. Even though there is no turning back from tracking and profiling, we should consciously implement healthy digital habit for you and for your newborn. To delay this:
- Don’t post any pictures of your kid online, nor mention the name. For the people that matter, you probably already sent a pic via iMessage/Whatsapp anyway, and/or they’ve been present during the important moments.
- That goes without saying but don’t be one of these parents or dog owner creating an Instagram or Facebook account solely for the newborn. It is very easy through account like this, to profile someone, for the simple fact that you are exposing your life, given plenty of personal points.
References
- Top 5 Trends of Artificial Intelligence (AI) 2019 — by Amyra Sheldon at Hackernoon
- I Visited 47 sites. Hundreds of Trackers Followed Me — by Farhad Manjo at The New York Times
- What is Facial Recognition, and How Sinister Is It? — by Ian Sample at The Guardian
- You Have The Right To Speak Up — by Gal Ringel CEO at Say Mine
- Facebook Just Gave 1.3 Billion Messenger Users A Reason To Delete Their Accounts — by Kate O’Flaherty at Forbes
- If You Didn’t ‘Sharent’, Did You Even Parent? by Zoya Garg, Elmer Gomez and Luciana Yael Petrzela at The New York Times
- Eavesdropping Warning Issued To Millions of Skype And Cortana Users — Kate O’Flaherty at Forbes
*Originaly published in The Ascent.