"Study: At Age 2, 81 percent of Kids have 'Digital Footprint'"

I was going to put up a picture of a sonogram of a baby, but all the pictures on google images seemed to be someone sharing their child's sonogram with friends and family on personal blogs and it just didn't seem right to me to intrude on their space...

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"Do you have Facebook friends who share pictures of their babies – from sonograms to their infants’ births, baptisms and other baby-related content? Or those who create an online account for their babies, long before these babies can even see clearly?

These babies clearly have an online presence at a very early age. And it’s not surprising. With people easily using media to share information with others, sharing their babies’ information may sound harmless.

According to a study conducted by Research Now, 92 percent of all American babies have some form of online presence by the time they reach the age of two. It also revealed that children as young as six months have an online presence, including their own e-mail addresses."

Manila Bulletin - Study: At Age 2, 81 percent of Kids have 'Digital Footprint'

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"Canadian moms seem to have few qualms about the privacy risks of putting family photos on the Internet, according to a new study.

Out of 10 regions surveyed by software maker AVG, Canadian mothers were also the most likely to post scans of their prenatal sonograms online.

The study, which surveyed 2,200 mothers in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and Spain, suggests 81 per cent of today's kids have some kind of online presence before they turn two."

The Daily Gleaner - Canadian moms most likely to upload sonogram online: report

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"According to a study released last week by AVG, an average of 81 per cent of toddlers in 10 Western countries has a digital presence; 92 per cent in the United States, followed by 91 per cent in New Zealand and 84 per cent in Australia and Canada. A third of children are online at just a few weeks of age, while a quarter appear on the web before they are born in the form of ante-natal scans.

"It's a sobering thought," said AVG managing director Peter Cameron in a statement. "The vast majority of children today have online presence by the time they are two years old -- a presence that will be built on throughout their whole lives.""

Ottawa Citizen - Kids' online presence raises security worries

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The best advice I have heard on photos and personal information online goes something like this:

It's not going away. Your online footprint will be there forever. Manage it. Make sure that the first thing that comes up is not those embarrassing pictures of you sucking a face mounted Reindeer nose dildo (real story [not me]), or mooning your boss at a Christmas party (real story [not me]), or running naked through a football stadium (real story [not me]). Rand Paul and Aqua Buddha gets no mention here because it wasn't an online photo leak...

You have an online presence whether you like it or not. Ensure the top searches about you are what you want them to be.