In this Internet-driven sharing age, it's tricky being a camera-happy parent.

Take, for example, a friend of mine. She's always been a social soul and has long had the habit of posting photos of her children on Flickr, the photo-sharing site, for others to see. Flickr is, like most social networking sites, based on the idea of building communities around shared interests. This means that, unless the owner has marked his or her photos as private, other users not only can see them, but also comment and add them to their collection of 'favorites' -- a sort of album of other people's photos.

And this is where my friend ran into problems. She was used to strangers commenting on her pictures. She welcomed it. But one day she found that a candid photo of her six-month old son receiving toilet training had been marked as 'favorite' by someone she didn't know. When she checked the person's album of favorites, she found her son's portrait among a host of adult-oriented photos and those of nude children. She was livid. 'The photos of nude children were not meant to be sexual, they are photos by proud parents, taking photos of their sons swimming naked on the beach, etc.,' she said.

She complained to Flickr, and the user in question has been removed. (A spokesman for Yahoo, the company behind Flickr, said he couldn't comment on specific cases. But he said that if members flag the company about something to review, employees will look at the profile of the user in question and take action, which might mean deleting the user's profile.)

Now my trusting friend is less trusting, limiting access to many of her photos on Flickr to friends and family. She's also warned all her Flickr friends, many of whom confessed to her they hadn't considered the implications of posting their photos. 'They take social networking Web sites for granted,' my friend says. 'I used to be like that too, but now there are too many people there.'

My friend is not alone. Geraly Unite-O'Day, a Chicago-based mother of two with roots in the Philippines, had been a Flickr user for more than a year before she spotted someone had 'favorited' some photos of her with her children, along with comments such as 'a beautiful woman and her beautiful daughter' and 'what a cutie.' But when Ms. Unite-O'Day looked at his profile she found his albums included photos of children blindfolded and women in various sexual poses. 'I was uncomfortable with our photos amongst those and his Flickr contacts,' she said in an email, 'So I blocked him.' Since then she has marked all her kids' photos on Flickr as private (so only her friends can see them) and has removed all their pictures from her blog. Others have gotten themselves organized. One Flickr group called 'Not OK With the Fakes' gathers information on how to stop people from copying their children's images. 'Some people have no problem seeing their images pop up on Orkut, MySpace, PhotoBucket and the like, but we do,' the group's home page proclaims. The group has 646 members.

And the problem is not just one of ensuring that your photos are marked private when you add them to a Web site like Flickr. Photos take on a life of their own once they're digital. Another friend who volunteers as a moderator on community message boards says that users forget that what feels like an intimate, safe environment to share thoughts and photos may also contain 'lurkers,' people who follow proceedings but don't participate. 'A lot of people get a sense of safe security when they go on a board,' my friend says. 'They think it's only the group that is there, so they prattle on and on.' Mothers use photos of their offspring as their 'buddy icon,' and proudly post pictures of their children, unaware that others may be watching. 'All it takes is a right- click and 'copy,'' my friend says.

So what should you do to protect pictures of your children getting into the wrong hands? The best advice is not to post any pictures of them online that they may be unhappy to see circulating when they're older. And don't post any photos of your children on any Web site unless you can be sure that all the people who can see it are people you feel comfortable with. Remember: The Internet is not the comfortable little world inside your computer, but a vast unpoliced city that favors the anonymous.

How can you find out if your children's photos have been used? It's not easy, unless you're technically savvy (check out one way of monitoring your Flickr feed here: www .loosewireblog.com/flickr.html). If you're really concerned, you may want to consider services like Kentucky-based ReputationDefender, which promises to 'defend you and your family's good name on the Internet' by rooting out all data about your family online and, if you want, to destroy 'all inaccurate, inappropriate, hurtful, and slanderous information about you and/or your child,' as its Web site puts it.

Its chief executive, Michael Fertik, says that the service searches for pictures using tags, labels, captions and text that are linked to any photos, as well as more complex searches, such as digging out the meta-data usually added to photos by cameras when the shots are taken. Photos often find their way outside the user's orbit, he says, but aren't usually leaked with malicious intent. 'It happens all the time,' he says, 'and usually doesn't start in malice but often starts in inadvertencies.'

If you use services like Flickr, then you should think very hard about each picture of your child you post. Consider your online album as the equivalent of leaving the treasured family album on a public bench for every passer-by to thumb through. Limit the number of people in your online group -- whether it's Flickr, MySpace or Facebook -- and remember that even then, photos still may leak out. Master the privacy features of the service that you use before you start uploading the family album.

You may want to consider photo-sharing Web sites with higher fences. EnjoyMyMedia (enjoymymedia.com), for example, takes a different approach by turning the computer folders where you store your photos into what it calls 'personal broadcasting channels' that not only take the hassle out of uploading photos but also restrict access to those family and friends to whom you have issued passwords. Boston-based CEO Keith Loris sees his service as the antithesis of the Web 2.0 mantra of 'share everything with everyone': 'I am not interested in my 15-year-old daughter's photos, videos, etc. appearing all over the Net,' he says. 'I want it to be really easy for my dad, college roommate, best friend, etc. to enjoy them, but I want it to be impossible for anyone else.'

This view resonates with another friend of mine, who found a simple headshot of his 1-year-old daughter had been 'favorited' by a stranger alongside headshots of dozens of other people. Where previously he posted lots of photos without restrictions so even the more technophobe members of his extended family could see them, now he's more cautious. 'I guess I'm distrustful of this person's site and intentions because of their anonymity,' he said, when I asked him why. 'Who are they? Why are they doing this? It could be all innocent. It might not be. Who knows these days on the Internet?'

His conclusion: 'With children, and in particular your own children, the feeling is that you should err on the side of caution.'

现在社会已经进入了一个由互联网带动的全面“共享”时代，不过，那些喜欢给孩子拍照并捣鼓到网上的家长们还真得多长几个心眼儿。

看看我一个朋友的例子吧。她是个社交活跃分子，而且很长时间以来一直喜欢把孩子的照片贴到Flickr网站上“秀”给大家看。Flickr是一个照片分享网站，它和大多数社交网站一样，也是基于为拥有共同兴趣的人构建社区这样的想法而创建的。在它的网站上，除非照片拥有者将照片标注为私有，否则，其他用户不仅可以看到它们，而且还可以发表评论、或者将它们收藏到自己的“最爱”里面。

不过，正是这一点让我的这位朋友遇到了麻烦。她早就习惯了有不认识的人对自己的照片发表评论，而且还欢迎他们这么做。不过有一天她发现，自己6个月大的儿子光着小屁股学习用马桶的“走光”照被某一个陌生人收藏到“我的最爱”里了。于是她看了一下这个人的收藏夹，结果发现，里面除了儿子的照片外，还有很多成人照片，以及其他儿童的裸体照片。她嗡地一下头都大了。她说，父母给孩子们拍的那些裸体照片──比如在海边光着身子扑腾的样子──丝毫没有色情意味，他们记录了父母们看着孩子长大的那份骄傲；但现在却被一些人拿来跟成人照片放在了一起。

随后她向Flickr反映了情况，那个用户后来被清除了。（Flickr母公司雅虎公司的发言人表示，他不会对具体个案发表评论，不过他表示，如果有网站用户反映情况，他们会检查被投诉用户的资料并采取必要行动，可能会删除被投诉方的资料。）

广告我这位朋友本来乐于相信别人，但她现在则加强了警惕。她对很多照片都加了限制，只允许朋友和家人浏览。她还以自己的例子提醒在Flickr上的所有朋友，他们中有很多人都承认，以前从没考虑过在这里贴照片可能带来的问题。我这位朋友说：“他们都想当然地认为社交网站不会有什么问题。我自己以前也这么想，但是现在网上人太多了，难免鱼龙混杂。”

有我朋友这样遭遇的不止一个。来自菲律宾的奥黛(Geraly Unite-O'Day)是两个孩子的母亲，现住在芝加哥。有一年多的时间她一直是Flickr的用户。有一天她发现，她跟孩子们在一起的照片被别人收到“我的最爱”里面，还注上了诸如“美女和她的漂亮女儿”“美人儿”之类的评语。她随后又看到收藏者的相册里还有被蒙住眼的孩子和摆出各种性感姿态的女子的照片。“我看到自己的照片和这样一些照片放在一起感到很不舒服”，奥黛在电子邮件中说，“因此我把他加到了封杀名单里”。在那之后，她把孩子的所有照片都加了“私有”标签、不让朋友之外的人看到，还从博客里删除了孩子们的照片。在这个问题上，其他人也组织起来并采取了行动。Flickr上面有一个名叫“决不容忍骗子”(Not OK With the Fakes)的群体，它们搜集各种可以防止别人拷贝孩子照片的办法。它在主页上表示：有些人对自己孩子的照片出现在Orkut、MySpace、PhotoBucket等网站并不介意，但我们要说“不”。目前，这个网上组织已有646名成员了。

当你把照片放到像Flickr这样的网站上之后，问题就不是将照片标注成“私有”那么简单了。数码格式的照片拥有自己的生命力。我还有一位朋友义务担任社区留言板的管理员，他说，用户们忘了这样一个事实：在网上这样一个感觉似乎很亲密、很安全的分享照片和思想的环境里或许也潜伏着一些别有用心的人，他们一直在“潜水”状态中观察着别人的一举一动，但自己并不参与。他指出，许多人进到一个话题组之后就被安全感蒙蔽了，以为那里都是“自己人”，于是就无所顾忌地聊个不停。妈妈们将孩子们的照片当做自己的网络图标，而且满心骄傲地希望贴出来给大家看，她们意识不到或许有其他人在看着这一切。这些人只需轻点鼠标，然后按“复制”就能为所欲为了。

那么，为防止孩子的照片落到别有用心的人手里，你该怎么做呢？最好的办法就是不要把那种等孩子们长大后若在公开场合看到会感到不高兴的照片挂到网上。还有，不要把孩子任何一张照片贴到任何一个网站里，除非你能保证所有能看到照片的人都不是自己讨厌的家伙。记住：互联网并非浓缩在你电脑里的美好世界，相反，它就像一个无人管制的大都市，匿名者在里面如鱼得水。

怎样才能知道你孩子的照片是否已经被别人盗用了呢？这可不容易，除非你在电脑技术方面很有一手。如果你确实担心，你可以考虑求助ReputationDefender 这家设在肯塔基州的公司在其网站上承诺，它能搜索到你家人在网上的所有数据，而且，如果你需要，它能销毁所有关于你和你孩子的不准确的、不恰当的、有害的或诽谤性的信息，从而捍卫你和家人在网上的好名声。

该公司首席执行长迈克尔•福提克(Michael Fertik)表示，这项服务能借助任何与照片有关的标注、作者名、标题和文字来搜索照片，还能实现更复杂的搜索，比如能找到照片拍摄时由相机生成的元资料等。他说，照片经常会脱离所有者的控制，但它们通常不是出于恶意才被泄露的。福提克说，这种事每时每刻都在发生，虽然往往不是出自恶意，但和粗心逃不开干系。

如果你使用Flickr一类的网站，那么无论贴出孩子的哪张照片，你都应该再三斟酌。可以把网上影集想像成被你留在公共长椅上的一本珍贵的家庭相簿──每个路过的人都可能过来翻看一番。不论是Flickr，还是MySpace或者Facebook，你都应该限制群落里的成员数量，并且记住就算这样，照片仍有可能被泄露出去。在上传家人照片之前，要充分了解网站的隐私保护政策。

你也许想考虑一下其他一些防范性比较强的网站。比如，EnjoyMyMedia (enjoymymedia.com)，它就采取了不同的做法，把你存储照片的电脑文件夹变成一个“个人播放频道”，这样一来，不仅在上传照片时简化了程序，而且只有从你那里得到了密码的家人或朋友才能看到你的照片。公司常驻波士顿的首席执行长凯斯•罗瑞斯(Keith Loris)表示，该公司的服务和Web 2.0技术所倡导的“和所有人分享一切”的概念完全背道而驰。他说：“我不想让我15岁女儿的照片、视频在网上随处可见。我希望我的父亲、同学，还有最好的朋友能够很容易地看到它们，但对其他人就不行。”

这个想法正与我另一位朋友不谋而合。他发现自己1岁女儿的大头照出现在一个陌生人的收藏夹里，里面还有几十张别人的头像。以前他曾经贴过很多照片都没有设定限制条件，这样是为了让那些对电脑操作一窍不通的家庭成员也能看到照片。但现在他警惕多了。他说，我觉得自己对这个人的网站很不信任，对那些不知名的人也多了些警觉。我问他为什么，他说：他们是谁？为什么要这么做？这种行为可能是没有恶意的，但也可能不是。现在的互联网，谁能说的好呢？

最后他说：“对孩子、特别是自己的孩子，我感觉怎么小心都不为过。”