You Might Be Able to Sue Your Parents for Posting Embarrassing Baby Pictures of You Online

Impact

To post baby photos on Facebook or to not post baby photos on Facebook? That is the question for modern parents. France now has an answer — you should hold back on sharing snaps of your baby's first doo-doo. 

When baby grows up, she can sue. French privacy laws dictate that parents who post non-consensual photos of their children's private lives could face a year in prison and pay 45,000 euros if their children decide to take them to court for their social media misdeeds, according to the Telegraph.  

Sandro Ducceschi/Flickr

A 2010 report shows that 81% of children under the age of 2 living in the U.S. and the European Union have some sort of digital existence. In the U.S. alone, 92% of children have some sort of information trail on the web. 

The real danger: Stopping parents from putting loads of information about their children online isn't just a matter of protecting that child's pride. This public scrapbooking puts kids at risk of identity theft. 

Years before they'll even begin investigating their credit scores, children are already a prime target for identity thieves. Hackers cobble together Social Security numbers with publicly available information to help them create fake identities. These "synthetic" personas are harder to track because they don't rely fully on the details of an actual person. For instance, an identity thief might take your child's Social Security number, birthday, name, but use a different address. Or maybe they attach a different name to your child's Social Security number.     

dadblunders/Flickr

Children are 35% more likely to fall prey to identity theft than adults, according to a 2012 report from AllClearID, and that percentage is growing.

So while it may be fun to detail baby's first everything on social media, consider the consequences of putting all that information online. Also, maybe don't give your kids a reason to hate you in the future. Just a thought.