Maybe it sounds a crazy question, but not as crazy as you may think! In a perfect world, we would be – we, Happy DigiScrappers, would stay in our little corner of the internet and the Whacky Weirdos of this world would stay in theirs………sadly though, this is not the case. We are very fortunate, really that our site is probably not too attractive to them - we don’t have a great deal to offer the Whackys – not sure they are into the digi-scapping thing yet! However, the recent spate of spam and smut site links posted in the forum id testimony to the fact that they are out –on a recruiting drive, even in the most unlikely spots they can ferret out.

Fortunately, we have a great International team – this means that even when many are sleeping there are plenty awake and online, ready to act fast when an objectionable post is spotted. What to do if you see something which is not, in your opinion “quite right”?

On each post in the bottom left hand corner there are 3 little graphics – the middle one is a red tri-angle with an exclamation mark – click this and you will get a “report bad post form” which when sent will go to the whole of Team Digital and someone will delete the post.

Then again, what about personal info posted in layouts? The jury is out on just how safe this is, but to quote Margie Lundie CEO “while we have "only" 66,000 registered members, we also have literally hundreds of thousands of non-registered members browsing the gallery too!” who is to know which of these are Whackys, not Happy DigiScrappers, who are clicking on a layout in order to post encouraging comments?

The advice is:
• DON’T be paranoid!!!
• A good rule of thumb is to not post anything you would not feel comfortable having on television or in a newspaper.
• Don’t include too many personal details – leave out (or change for you web copy) complete names, exact locations, and birth dates
• Blur faces if you feel strongly
• Blur or smudge names of locations – school name, sport centre etc
• Always ask permission before uploading images of anyone out of your family or even more particularly, other peoples children.
• from this take, leave out or add to, as you wish!

Valuable information:
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children www.netsmartz.org
The companion site for children is www.netsmartzkids.org

My thanks to members who posted in the thread started by omiof5 Please be careful out there.....and especially to omiof5 for starting it.

Click here for a printable copy of this article.

© Meryl Bartho August, 2006