Mommy Blogs can be a Pedophile's Smorgasbord
OK, flame me now but I agree with Kathie Lee Gifford and her views on mommy blogging, specifically putting too much information on your kids on the site. As a 50-something mom I feel the need to come to KLG's defense. Many say she's a hypocrite because she talked about her kids all the time on TV during her stint with Regis Philbin. I disagree. She might come from a different time but she's not wrong to be concerned.
Flashback to the early 90s when she was on TV giving daily updates on her family life. The majority of people didn't have personal computers. Al Gore hadn't created the Internet yet. Although there were plenty of pedophiles, creeps and stalkers among us they had to work a lot harder to find their prey. If you wanted to get someone's phone number you had to either look it up in a phone book or call the Operator. If you had someone's phone number but their address wasn't listed in the phone book you could get a "Criss Cross Directory" and get their address that way (that usually involved going to a Public Library and actually looking in a book). If you wanted a picture of someone you had to take it yourself (assuming they weren't a celebrity, in which case you could buy a book or magazine). How about a satellite picture of their home? You'd have to be in the FBI or something. Where could you find pictures of little kids for your perverse pleasure? I don't know, probably at family functions or church. Anyway, you get the point. You really had to go through a lot to obsess over someone.
Fast forward to the present. Everyone has access to a computer. In a few keystrokes you can find things like someone's address, their phone number, charities they support, things they have said, what they look like and how much they paid for their house. You can even zoom into a satellite street view photo of their home. There are million of blogs. There are thousands of mommy blogs. Now I enjoy reading about the trials and tribulations of motherhood and funny things that happen along way as much as anyone. I like hearing about good things that happen. I fully realize the power of the mommy network as an on-line support system. Long live mommy bloggers.
But I believe one of a mother's most important jobs is protecting the safety of their children and for whatever reason -- ego, ignorance, their quest for their "15 Minutes of Fame" some mommy bloggers get carried away and in doing so put their child in harm's way. Revealing too much information like their real names, school, sports teams, performances, and PHOTOs -- can lead whack-jobs right to your front door or at the very least deliver those pictures of your child that you think are so cute directly to their desktop where they can easily share them with their secret network of fellow pedophiles. Wonder how many hits a mommy blog by JonBenet Ramsey's mom would have gotten?
Out of curiosity I Googled one of the more famous mommy bloggers little girl (I am purposely not linking to the sites for obvious reasons). She's pictured on lots of sites but the one that got my skin crawling was on Flickr. Ordinarily you can post pictures on sites like this to share with friends but this particular photo had many comments from people who knew who she was by name because of her mother's blog.
Think about that for a minute. That child was identified on the spot by total strangers. People will know her around her town and around the world. Doesn't that scare you? Call me old-fashioned but I just don't get it. Life can be dangerous enough. Sometimes kids aren't even safe in their own schools or churches or families but why in God's name would a mom do something that would put their kids at greater risk?
This is an original 50-Something Mom's post.
