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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Instagram is one of the hottest social networking sites for tweens these days. More and more parents are discovering, though, that it comes with a very big concern; your child could wind up putting your home on the map without even knowing it.
"Most older people don't have Instagram," said Instagram user Molly Matysiak. "That's like our kind of thing."
Instagram is not your mom and dad's social site. Many parents don't know just how much those pictures are revealing about young people.
"It's just pictures," said Matysiak.
It turns out, though, it's much more. Those simple pictures could include location data mapping to exactly where the photo was taken.
"I think it's scary that you can just find someone by taking a picture somewhere and posting it," said Matysiak.
"It worries me," says parent Angela Frizell. "It really worries me."
Angela Frizell is also Girl Scout troop leader.
If you're in her troop, you'll learn all about social media and the potential dangers.
I think it's scary that you can just find someone by taking a picture somewhere and posting it.
–Molly Matysiak.
"You can look at a picture on Instagram and it can pull up a map," said Frizell, "that shows exactly where you are."
At her meetings, she has a rule, no uploading pictures on your phone. But, she knows it's not enough to talk to her girls.
"I do my best to educate them," said Frizell, "but, children often think they know more than the adult. So, I want to pass that on to the parent."
And if you're a parent, you might have a lot to learn.
"It's giving me data about how the image was taken, when it was taken," said Frizell, "what the latitude and longitude of it is and then, I can take that data and feed it into a map program."
What did Instagram have to say about these concerns?
Their best advice; be careful when uploading photos. You can also review and delete mapped locations after you've uploaded a picture.
Besides not using the service, here's what else you can do. Don't use Instagram's camera. Turn off GPS on your phone's camera and be careful when you upload a photo. Also, you can set your Instagram account to "private".
A warning though, if the software ever updates, double-check your setting. They can revert to the default position, which is set to "public" not "private".
"I'll probably tell my friends to be more careful on what they do and what they post and where they take it," said Matysiak.
"I thought we had pretty good parental controls and all the new stuff," Molly's mother Tracy Matysiak told KY3. "You just don't realize what there is."
Bottom line, if you haven't checked out your tween's Instagram account, now is a good time to see if a stranger can find your home on the map.
A group of parents are concerned enough have started on online petition about the issue. They want the company to make "private" thedefault setting as well as disable geotagging for 13-17-year-olds.
The petition has more than 75,000 signatures. One of the leaders of the movement says she doesn't think the company will actually change the settings but hopes the petition will make parents more aware of the problem.
