It’s hard enough for people to adequately protect their own digital identities. However, in today’s online culture of information oversharing, parents must also worry about safeguarding their children. Several mothers learned that the hard way when they were victimized by an unusual but disturbing form of online harassment: hackers stealing photos of their children from Facebook.

Several mothers told Yahoo Parenting about unsettling incidents involving Facebook pictures of their children, including one Nashville mother who discovered that photos of her daughter had been shared by a user in China.

“I started scrolling and noticed he had lot of pictures of little girls,” the mother said. “I was so scared and shocked. I mean, that share linked back to my personal page so anybody could have clicked on it to see where I lived.”

She was so spooked by the encounter that she locked down all of her privacy settings and began using an app, KidsLink, that allows parents to privately share photos. While there are laws protecting children online, experts say that parents need to take responsibility for the content they post, because once something is posted to the public it is not protected by law. Parents also need to stay up-to-date on their Facebook account’s privacy settings to prevent scary situations like this one from occurring.

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