Research shows most parents on social media post more than 190 pictures of their kids every year, and many of them have no idea about the dangers of oversharing information about their children on the Internet.

An online poll conducted by UK-based Parent Zone, commissioned by Nominet for its Know The Net campaign, shows by the time their children turn five years old, parents have posted nearly a thousand photos of their children on social media.

The average number of kiddie photos posted by parents at around this time is 973, amounting to around 195 photos posted each year. As children get older, parents post even more, with the average number rising up to 208.

However, 17 percent of those polled have not even once checked their privacy settings on Facebook, which is the most common social network to post their children's photos on, while almost half of them, or 46 percent, said they only checked their privacy settings "once or twice."

Moreover, while 70 percent of the parents said they took the photos and posted them online using their smartphones, only 49 percent said they knew that the phone's location settings could be linked to the photos and show the world where they were taken, information that stalkers and pedophiles can easily glean from the Internet for their own unthinkable purposes.

Determining the location of people in photos is not very difficult, as seen in a cat-stalking project by data analyst Owen Mundy. Gathering all photos tagged with the word "cat" from Flickr, Instagram, Twitpic and other sources, Mundy was able to create a map of exactly where in the world these cats live, allowing all forms of cat abusers to stalk these unaware felines at their exact locations. It's not exactly difficult to do the same thing with children's photos.

"While the web helps relatives to keep in touch and participate in our everyday lives, it also has the potential to lead to accidental oversharing," said Russell Haworth, CEO of Nominet. "It's important to ensure that the correct privacy settings are in place to safeguard our personal information and content."

Nominet recommends that parents check their privacy settings regularly and make sure they are only sharing their photos with people whom it is appropriate to share them with. Also, it is important to consider the feelings of the people in the photo before posting them, since children inevitably grow up and will most likely hate their parents when they see their potty-training photos posted all over Facebook.

Parents must also refrain from relying on social networks as the sole storage place for their children's photos, since they are not in full control of what happens to those photos. Lastly, social media users must always stay in the know about the latest features added to their favorite platforms because the latest updates could easily tweak the privacy settings to open up those photos free for all.

Photo: Matthew O'Thompsonski | Flickr

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