If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you've probably noticed that in an attempt to maintain some illusion of privacy / pseudo-anonymity, I don't usually post photos of myself online.
If I do, half the face is usually covered, or blotted out somehow.
I'm a little more lax on Facebook, but not by much, since half my friends there I only know via blogging, and not in real life.
For friends who do know me in real life, and who happen to post photos that include me, I'm happy to report that they are happy to cooperate to blur me out; in their Facebook photo albums, I just go in and 'untag' myself, no biggie.
Then for space-saving reasons, once I figured out how to do it, I have made it a point to not post hi-res images on my blogs:
no need to have something at 1024 px width out there! I usually resize photos to 300-400 px before uploading, followed by further shrinkifying if necessary.
Why am I bringing this up? Well... A recent story has confirmed that I'm on the right track: have you heard about
the Smith family from Missouri whose family Christmas photo ended up on a huge storefront advertisement in the Czech Republic? You can read about it
here.
The high-resolution image had been sent out via email to family and friends, posted on a family member's blog and to some social networking sites. How the image then made its way to the storefront advertisement is being investigated.
The Smiths are fortunate that the photo wasn't used "in an unseemly manner", serving only to inform potential Prague shoppers about the Grazie store's delivery service.
According to Danielle Smith, the next time she posts a photo on the Internet, she's going to lower the resolution or add an electronic watermark to make it hard to reproduce.
Better late than never... but yes, please do exercise greater caution about what you choose to share online, okay? And that goes for all of you readers too, okay?
*climbs down from soapbox*
