Whats in a name?

The other day I  had someone harmlessly laugh at me for "coding" my kid's names on social media.  The light humor was as if I was crazy to think that anything bad could ever happen to them.  I mean who are we?  We aren't famous or important in any one's eyes but the Lord's.  While I understand the thought behind this I am not willing to risk their safety to test it.   I have not always felt this way.  I was the mom who posted a photo every day to social media!  I sometimes would even tell where we were!  Once convicted of needing to keep their lives, images, and info more private I took a couple of steps.

1. I went through my friends list.  If I hadn't seen/talked to them in the last 2 years I un-friended them.  I of course left family and some out of state friends on the list.  
2. Next I changed all the privacy settings on the albums that were older then the current year.  I changed them all to only be visible by me.  
3. This step took the longest.  I left quite a few people on my friends list that are work related or from some other faucet of life that I didn't feel like needed to know much about my family.  I set each of them as an Acquaintance.  Facebook then has options with each post that you can make visible to Public, Me only, Friends, or Friends except Acquaintances.  When I post about my family I make sure I set to Friends except Acquaintances.
4. Then I had to stop typing out locations and names!  I started referring to my children as I do in my blog as G man and Little miss.  I no longer post from my cell phone so that FB doesn't automatically show my location.

Why do I do this?  What started this "paranoia?"  I am a frugal Mama and I buy, sell, and trade my kids clothes on-line with other Mamas.  I normally post on the boards a picture of the outfit hanging on a hanger and a picture of the outfit on my child.  After I sell or trade the outfit and have shipped it I delete the photos.  A couple days later I am looking through the Facebook Group for some clothes for Little Miss and I see her picture up.  I notice that It is not me who is listing it!!!!  The mama's ad is saying that she is in search of this outfit.  I commented to her that this picture is of my child and she needs to remove it and delete it from her computer immediately!  She did and apologized and I gave her the picture of the outfit with out Little Miss in it to use.  That scared me!  It is so easy for someone to see a picture you post and download it to their computer or save in on their phone and then you no longer have control over where it goes or who sees it.  I was pretty rattled and I knew then I had to take some steps to prevent this.

I know there are still some that may think I am crazy and I will still see pictures of their kiddos with full names in the description.  My hope is that my mistakes of letting her picture be taken (although somewhat harmlessly) by someone off of my Facebook will be that you don't let the same happen to your child.  You never know who is taking it or what they are doing with it.  Please be careful.  I hate to be so glum but there are people in this world that view others as property and with all the pornography and human trafficking in our world today it is our job as parents to keep them safe.  Safety on-line is just as important as their physical safety.   

So if I refer to your kiddo by an initial in a comment or just by an attribute (pretty girl or handsome boy) don't be offended I haven't forgotten their name but I feel as convicted to help you in this fight as I do for my own children.  

Behold, children are a gift of the Lord,

The fruit of the womb is a reward.

Psalms 127:3