Pictures. Young Kids. Pedophiles.

[RMThompson]

Today I recieved a disturbing email on my flickr account. Here is an excerpt:

This morning when I logged onto Flickr I noticed someone had faved several of my daughter's pics. I immediately had a weird feeling and checked out the person's profile. Nothing. Then I checked the person's pics. No pics. Next I decided to check their favorites. FOUR pages of nothing but little girls, one of them your little girl or a little girl you know.

So, after doing my own searching, I found that yes... someone has created a profile on flickr, and has four pages of nothing but little girls, under the age of 12 seemingly, some much much younger.

The worst part is not that they are just little girls, but that in MANY of the photographs the girls were in underwear, bathing, or in bathing suits. The pictures of them seperatly were innocent enough, most likely parents capturing some of the sillier moments in their children's life.

However, seeing them together like that made my stomach churn. The picture I had posted was my daughter in a bathing suit, with a flower in her hair. There was nothing revealing about it, but there it was stuck up with all these other pictures.... and I got sick looking at it all.

Immediatly, I deleted the picture, and I blocked the contact... but it's been bugging me - should I do more? Is there anything more TO do? I mean, it is PEREFECTLY legal for this person to make favorites of whatever he wants. Even if we see a potential problematic pattern in the pictures, can we jump to the needed conclusion to REPORT him?

What would you do?

 

[HASHASHIN]

make a fake account as a kid, and lure him into a trap to get him arrested "to catch a predator" style

 

[ashadiow]

Contact Flickr. Period. That isn't right.

 

[jols]

not sure this would be against the law.

but its odd and i would contact flickr and inform them.

and keep your pics private

 

[Alex_B]

it is not against the law. if these are jst favourites of images. so what. if he did not breach any copyright or whatever, then it is not illegal.

of course it is disturbing, and he has probably a twisted mind (be it pedophile or just crazy for cuteness), he might be dangerous, and probably needs help. but there is not much you can do about it.

but here you can see, why I never ever post images of family (young or old), or anything really showing my private life.


just too many stalkers and other strange people around, and if you expose yourself on the net, this is your own risk you take, but if you expose others, in particular the weak, well, then you have quite a responsibility there on your shoulders.

 

[jols]

just deleted all pics of kids ff my flickr and my website.

the internet is great but can be very bad

 

[RMThompson]

just too many stalkers and other strange people around, and if you expose yourself on the net, this is your own risk you take, but if you expose others, in particular the weak, well, then you have quite a responsibility there on your shoulders.

Hence me deleting my kids pics.

 

[RyanLilly]

I try not to post much about my personal life or photos on the internet, and if I do post some photos to show on this site or whatnot, I usually remove them after a brief period of time.

If you want to share family pics, try a site that requires a password so only your friends and family can view them.

 

[JIP]

For me it is the same as others have said, you really need to limit those kind of pictures on the web. I have seen the kind of things peole do with th images they skim from Flikr or the like and if you could see that you would never put an imae of your daughter online again. Personally, if I want someone to see a picture of mine I will email it to them because if you want any kind of privacy keep it off the web.

 

[Mike_E]

RM, You hold the copyright to the photo on his page, do you not?

Start with the web master of flicker and go from there. Copyright infringement and whatever else you can come up with.

If nobody gripes then nobody cares and then "they" can do whatever "they" want.

 

[TheOtherBob]

RM, You hold the copyright to the photo on his page, do you not?

Start with the web master of flicker and go from there. Copyright infringement and whatever else you can come up with.

Favoriting is much like bookmarking a website - the person hasn't taken, moved, or otherwise used the picture, they've just added its location to a list of pictures that they can revisit easily. So there's no possible copyright infringement here. (Which is good - otherwise the whole Flickr community would be in trouble.)

Now, if the person has made some other use of the photo outside of Flickr, that could be different, of course.

 

[Mike_E]

Oh, sounds a bit free to me.

Obviously I never got around to using it.

Maybe NBC would like to know.

 

[Battou]

Contact Flickr. That is one of many behavioral patterns that is a monitored by law officials trying to locate track child predators. They should know who to get a hold of and get the information to for investigating.

 

[Peanuts]

Yes do contact Flickr.

Whenever any favourites one of my photos I check their profile, pictures, and favouties. I wouldn't doubt if I have blocked at least a dozen people.

 

[Garbz]

There's not a lot that can be done. If the photos are of postable nature then they are viewable.

There are plenty of sites out there that trade these types of pictures. Everyone including federal police know about it and yet the paedophiles just laugh in their faces knowing that it's perfectly legal. Is sickening.