Quote Originally Posted by Inspired by Reggio View Post

Also with family in the criminal justice system my understanding with pedophiles is they are not turned on by images 'freely available' online and are more likely to target a child they have seen IN PERSON somewhere and than obtain photos for their fantasy and they do not want ones openly available they want to get ILLEGAL pictures of children not openly shared because that is part of their sick perversion of being 'sneaky/forbidden' that turns them on ... so basically they are going to find out where you live and use their own camera take photos of your kid in the yard or playing or right through the window of your home on a long range zoom without your knowledge or they will find a computer trail of you and hack right into your computer and steal them off your hard drive because that is part of the 'excitement' for them .... they are not online looking at 'free photos' of kids through advertizements in magazines and so forth so really that fear is not based in reality of risk ... statistically speaking most 'pedophile abuse' is perpetrated by someone who KNOWS the child so I would be more afraid of Uncle Bob who always volunteers to take your kid for icecream at the Family reunion or the neighbor on the block with the 'cool toys' but no kids or the coach who offers to drive the kids home alone cause well they are the 'higher risk' of actually being the pedophile than some stranger who might see your kids photo on a daycarebear ad
While I appreciate this opinion and perspective based on information from people with some inside insight, I think this is to general an assumption to be made. I get the psychy behind this, the appeal isn't as great if its easy in the minds of a pedophile, but its not the case for everyone one out there with a sick and perverted mind. There are many things that are out of my hands when it comes to being able to control things such as cctv, satellite imaging etc etc. I do however feel that if I can in anyway reduce the risk of my childs picture being made available to these kinds of people then the option should be given to me to refuse the right to my childs picture being used. I believe within the program where a picture is being used for educational purposes and within a trusted circle then this is absolutly fine. This is however IMO a very different use than posting online where there are websites and web users whose sole purposes are to source out pictures of children, amongst other things no doubt, and host them on sites and even amongst pedo circles. There are people online, every minute of everyday causing trouble and successfully hacking through firewalls, privacy software and anti-virus programs so a way to not let myself be consumed by anxiety over the true security of my childrens images, I refrane from posting any pictures of my own children online, EVER. The risk of one lazy, pedo googler trolling for kiddie pictures is enough for me to check the no thanks box. Also, being a lover of physical matter (real-life book fan for instance haha) I love to print my photo's and still have photo albums that I update on a regular basis. I also make an annual collage of each individual daycare kids photo's with a calender book on the bottom as a gift for parents to see their child grow through the year. The pictures I take of their children are emailed to them and printed out for my own personal collection and then deleted from my hard drive. This is what I have consent from the parents to do.

On my website the pictures are of the daycare space, and pictures of themed decorations and crafts that the children have made but without them in the shot.