Cyber Kidnapped

My family has been cyber kidnapped.  It's a real thing that has been on the news and all over my Facebook newfeed.  It's when someone steals pictures and uses them as their own.  It feels like a huge invasion of privacy and just really icky that someone is pretending not only that they are me, but my children are their children, named Ella Grace, Avalyn Isabelle and Chayse Xavier.  This person claims her (my) triplets were born on February 7, 2015.  My cousin, who found the fake account on instagram commented on the picture alerting people that it was fake account and then reported the person's account.  This doesn't mean that they haven't set up a new account using the same pictures, we just haven't found it yet.  I'm spending nap time doing some research to find other accounts with my pictures on them, while I should be napping since two of my kids have ear infections and kept me up for a good chunk of the night.

I feel silly saying that I feel like it's an invasion of privacy, since I did put these pictures on the internet for anyone and everyone to see.  That was obviously a mistake.  I read about cyber kidnapping a few weeks ago when a story popped up on Facebook but thought, "that will never happen to me.  I just have a little blog, no one looks at it except family and no one would care enough to steal my pictures."  Wrong.  Someone out there is so bored that they are pretending to be me.  They even posted the picture of me 34 weeks pregnant and PUT THEIR OWN WATERMARK ON MY PICTURE! Who does that?  Their profile picture is our first family picture of the 5 of us in the NICU, with 2 of my children still connected to monitors.  I know this picture came from my blog because I never posted it anywhere else.  Also, the last name of these fake triplets is Renfro, which is a last name in my family, so it's scary that the person did that much research on me that they know that.

If you're reading this now, it's because I know you personally and have invited you to read about my family.  Please do not share my pictures with anyone, and please do not post any pictures of my children on social media, as I don't know who your friends are on social media and can't monitor that.  I'm sorry to be controlling, but this is scary and I don't want any more pictures of my children out there unless I share them.  My facebook friend list will now be limited to people that I know well, no more acquaintances or people I've never met.

I guess it was a blessing in disguise that my blog app stopped letting me post pictures, that way this person doesn't have any pictures of my kids since their first birthday.  Please make your pictures private and be careful who you share them with.  Learn from my mistake!

And again, a huge thank you to Taylor, my cousin who found the impostor.  You're amazing!!!