These social media site have all these privacy settings. But how private can you really make all the info and pics you're sharing with your 'friends' and followers?
I once read this saying: 'If you don't want it on the front page on an international newspaper, you shouldn't put it online.' And I believe that's completely true.
Eventhough I do check the privacy settings on the sites I use, I was still nonchalant about it all. I don't share very interesting things. Not things I'd think others would be interested in stealing. Apparently, I was wrong. And in a way, I could've known. Actually, I should've known.
A few weeks ago I came across a picture of a dear friend of mine and her (and mine) fave actor Robert Pattinson on fangroup page of his on Facebook. I tagged my friend in the post and asked her whether she knew about it. She didn't and asked them to remove it. That opened a whole can of worms. That particular FB group reacted very nasty towards my friend. And blamed me for causing a drama where it wasn't needed.
My friend went to search further and discovered that someone had stolen her pic from Instagram and had tweeted it. As a result several people had retweeted it. One of them even claiming it was her own picture.
Then she discovered her photo on a Russian fansite for Rob. And she also found one of my pictures there. On a further inspection of this site she found a whole entry of this blog there aswell. My story and pictures of me meeting Rob and his singer songwriter friend Sam Bradley.
At first I was furious!!! How dare they steal my story and pictures. They even watermarked my pictures with their sitelogo. They'd translated my story in Russian. I began writing an angry email to this site. All they'd had to do was ask my permission. I wouldn't have agreed to them watermarking my pictures. But I wouldn't have minded them sharing my story.
Halfway through writing that email I decided to checkout the comments to that post. Most were positively jealous of my meetings with Rob. But there was one comment that stood out for me. It was of someone who'd met me. She said she admired my dedication and persistence to through great lenghts to meet Rob. She knew about my 4 days/3 nights stay at Leicester Square for the last Breaking Dawn premiere in London. She understood how I felt and what it means to me.
The admin of the site responded to her message saying she liked my story and always read my blog with great pleasure. That made me smile. Sure, I still wish they would've asked my permission. But these fans are like me. They love Rob and respect other fans.
Here is their site where you can read my story in Russian.
Unfortunately my friend experienced the bad fans. She contacted several people on Twitter and sites to ask them remove her picture of her and Rob. Some did so. But some reacted very badly. Saying things like it was her own fault for posting it online. So disrespectful. So rude. Unbelievable.
So my message is, please be carefull with what you post online. People just take what is yours. People can be extremely disrespectful. What you see are words and images. Some people don't realise there are real people and real feelings behind those words and images.
