A member of a forum, of which I frequent far too often, has posted this on her Live Journal account, and I just had to share it (with her permission) in the hope that we all stop and think about our online activities ...
"Please Read - Inappropriate Use of Photos"
"I am not usually one to get all up on my high horse about photos I've posted online. It's annoying when something you've posted ends up somewhere else without credit, but at the weekend I heard something that made my stomach churn. A complete stranger told me that she recognised my son from an email attachment that's been floating round. Apparently someone has taken a picture of him and Gareth David-Lloyd and captioned it "Ianto and Lisa's Baby". I can only imagine that someone saw the photo of Gareth and a small mixed race boy and there mind had that random thought. The thing is that most normal people would leave it there and wouldn't then pass that photo around with a silly caption. You have no idea how I felt on hearing that my son was being used as an object of amusement for someone. I share my pictures in very few places - my LJ (photo posts are usually flocked), my private photobucket account and this one photo was shared with friends on a Torchwood forum. What makes this worse is that it is probably someone I know that has done this. While I usually don't worry too much about sharing pictures of my son online this is taking it too far. I want to be able to share pics with my friends but this has seriously made me have to rethink that. Taking a picture of someone's child and knowingly editing it and passing it around is not cool. Not cool at all. I know this is my fault for being trusting but I wanted to post this so that people may think twice about how they use images belonging to others. I feel violated, I feel that my son has been violated and I just can't understand why someone would do that. it was creepy having a stranger approach me and say "I'm sorry to have to tell you this..." and then go on to describe the photo in detail. I just hope that by posting this the person who did this may see it and that they (and anyone reading this really) will have a long think about how they use other people's images without permission in future. There's not much I can do about this now but please, if you get this email, don't pass it on. Seriously fandom, it's creepy stuff like this that gives us a bad name."
"Please Read - Inappropriate Use of Photos"
"I am not usually one to get all up on my high horse about photos I've posted online. It's annoying when something you've posted ends up somewhere else without credit, but at the weekend I heard something that made my stomach churn. A complete stranger told me that she recognised my son from an email attachment that's been floating round. Apparently someone has taken a picture of him and Gareth David-Lloyd and captioned it "Ianto and Lisa's Baby". I can only imagine that someone saw the photo of Gareth and a small mixed race boy and there mind had that random thought. The thing is that most normal people would leave it there and wouldn't then pass that photo around with a silly caption. You have no idea how I felt on hearing that my son was being used as an object of amusement for someone. I share my pictures in very few places - my LJ (photo posts are usually flocked), my private photobucket account and this one photo was shared with friends on a Torchwood forum. What makes this worse is that it is probably someone I know that has done this. While I usually don't worry too much about sharing pictures of my son online this is taking it too far. I want to be able to share pics with my friends but this has seriously made me have to rethink that. Taking a picture of someone's child and knowingly editing it and passing it around is not cool. Not cool at all. I know this is my fault for being trusting but I wanted to post this so that people may think twice about how they use images belonging to others. I feel violated, I feel that my son has been violated and I just can't understand why someone would do that. it was creepy having a stranger approach me and say "I'm sorry to have to tell you this..." and then go on to describe the photo in detail. I just hope that by posting this the person who did this may see it and that they (and anyone reading this really) will have a long think about how they use other people's images without permission in future. There's not much I can do about this now but please, if you get this email, don't pass it on. Seriously fandom, it's creepy stuff like this that gives us a bad name."
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