This evening I received a PM in Flickr that left me cold.

:: Hello

allows me to use the photos of Gabriella in orkut? please,
it is very vtor. I hope your answer, thanks!

The individual does not have any photos posted of their own and has been adding other users with pictures of their children as a contact. Not very social and extra creepy.

Now, I suppose I have been naive and pretty cavalier with posting pictures of my family figuring that the low amount of traffic on this site and my Flickr account would pretty much leave me feeling secure through relative obscurity.  That blanket of blissful ignorance has been pulled away.  Maybe it is a knee-jerk response but I am marking all my photos of Gabi, nieces, and nephew as only viewable by friends and family.  This means that any of my prior posts that link to Flickr, like the previous two, will likely show nothing.

I am very disturbed by what parents have been talking about on Flickr how they have found their photos used by members of the Orkut community and while I’m not one to get riled up about pedophiles lurking around every street corner the thought of some Brazilian pleasuring himself to pictures of my daughter playing shirtless on a hot summer’s day has lodged itself into my brain and I cannot shake it.

If you read this site and in the short-run would like to keep seeing pictures of Gabi then feel free to friend me on Flickr. Longer term I’ll be exploring options to host the pictures I’d like to post so I can keep tighter control on their usage.  Many apologies to anyone who has been enjoying the photos.

//edit
So I think that the tack I am going to take is self hosting low resolution images for the photos I’d like to share and linking them to the high quality ones on Flickr. If those pictures are of my family then they will be marked as Friends & Family so if you have a Flickr account and we are not already contacts just add me.