Yesterday CBC Newsworld had a show about a mother who was shocked to find that photos of her son that had been posted publicly on Flickr also showed up on an MTS Allstream site and a site in Portugal with comments on how cute he was. This was followed by the usual alarmist commentary and conclusion that the mother was taking all the photos off Flickr as if this was the only way to provide protection. There was no mention of the Flickr feature of identifying online photos as private so they could only be seen by designated friends and relatives and not be reposted by the general public to another web site. It is good to inform people of some of the risks of publishing information but it should include information on existing easily applied protection that can be used.