Sharing your photos online isn’t just fun, it also requires a certain amount of responsibility. You post your photos on a photo sharing site because you want your friends and family to know what’s going on in your life, but you should also consider the fact that your friends and family may not be the only ones with access to your page. Sharing your photos means that you could be sharing them with the world, so make sure all public photos are appropriate for all audiences. I know, the last thing you want to do is worry about who else is looking at your photos, but you wouldn’t want your children stumbling upon some inappropriate photos available for public viewing.

When you make the decision to start an account with a photo sharing website, look through all of your photos and decide which ones you wouldn’t want your parents or children to see and make certain those photos aren’t accessible to the entire web. Any photos that embarrass you or make you blush should remain in a private photo album that can only be viewed by a select group of people. Most photo sharing sites allow you to choose the photos that are made public, private, or restricted so you can choose who sees which photos. Sharing photos means that it isn’t just about the appropriateness of your photos you should be worried about; you should also worry about who is looking at them. When you use a photo sharing website, make sure that any questionable photos are marked private or have restricted access.

Any photos that include partial or full nudity should never make it onto the public page of your shared photo site. In fact, any photos that you wouldn’t want a potential employer to see should be made private or restricted. By that same token, any photo sharing site that doesn’t allow you to decide which photos are made public and which remain private should be avoided. It’s important that you exercise discretion when deciding which photos are made available for public viewing because you never know who’ll stumble upon your public photos.

Any shutterbug worth their weight is always snapping photos, which means you have tons of photos of your friends and family doing things they may not want the world to see. Just because you were fully covered in your Spring Break photos, doesn’t mean that your closest pals want photos of them bikini-clad and chugging large quantities of alcohol posted on the web. Use your discretion to determine what photos are appropriate to be shared and which photos you would be loathed to have your parents view. Below, I have provided a list of photo sharing do’s and don’ts.

SHARING DON’TS

• Avoid nude photos
• Don’t post any photos with partial nudity
• Don’t share photos of lewd acts
• Avoid posting simulated lewd acts
• Don’t use full names on photo captions
• Any photos you want to remain private should not be posted.

SHARING DO’S

• Do post family gatherings and vacations
• Special event photos are okay to post.
• Post fun photos that are full of life

Above all else, you don’t want any of your pictures on a photo sharing website to come back and haunt you. Keep in mind that future employers, your parents, and young family members will all have access to your public photos, not to mention the rest of the internet-surfing world. If there are things in your photos you would be embarrassed about if they were made public, let those photos remain private where only a few people have access to them..