Sharing your child’s information

Sharing your child’s information

What you need to know

What you need to know

Images with children in school uniform, their name or indicators of their location in the background can be used by offenders to build a profile and groom parents and children.

Without strong privacy settings, images shared online of their child's first day at school or other everyday images may end up being seen by unintended audiences. Police are continuing to see instances of everyday images of children in the collections of online child sex offenders.

Police are also seeing cases of online grooming starting through what you as a parent, carer or family members have posted online, including instances of offenders targeting them on social media for access to their children. Offenders offering free products for your child to model clothing, is just one example of how this can occur.

There are simple steps you can take to have more control over who can access content of your child and minimise the chance of inappropriate contact.

Strong privacy settings can limit who can access the content on your social media accounts and personal information.

Some platforms allow you to undertake a privacy check-up to make sure you are only sharing this information with people who you would want to see it, for example, ‘friends only’.

Community or school social media pages featuring children should also consider the types of images being shared and who can view them. Settings such as ‘private’ groups or ‘invite only’ with approved followers can help to manage who has access to the page.

Advice for parents and carers

Advice for parents and carers


All ages
All ages

What can I do?

  • It’s strongly recommended that you only share images of your children with people you know and trust
  • Use strong privacy settings on all social media accounts
  • Review you ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ on all social media accounts and remove anyone you don’t know
  • If another person is taking photos of your child, consider having a discussion around how the photos will be used and how they will be shared

Related Advice

What we do

We develop resources and advice for parents, carers and educators, children and young people to prevent online child sexual exploitation.

Led by the Australian Federal Police, our program includes:

  • Presentations for schools and community groups
  • Online learning resources
  • Activities to do at home
  • Fact sheets and guides
  • Educators resources

 

What we don’t do

Our program doesn’t cover:

  • Information about general online safety, including cyberbullying
  • Information about cybercrime

For information about online safety visit the eSafety Commissioner

For information about cybercrime visit ReportCyber

Our partners

ThinkUKnow Australia is a partnership between the Australian Federal Police, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Datacom and Microsoft Australia, and delivered in partnership with all State and Territory police and Neighbourhood Watch Australasia.

© Australian Federal Police

The Australian Federal Police acknowledges the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia and acknowledges their continuing connection to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to the people, the cultures and the elders past, present and emerging.