It started with a DM in my “hidden folder” on Instagram.
“Hey Lana! I’m not sure if you’re aware of this but this just popped up in my Facebook? And I recognized your face? I can’t send the photo but someone is using your photos under a different name?”
The message was from a young mum who follows me. She seemed genuine, and within one reply, I knew she was. Her next message included screenshots of a woman’s profile. Her name was Georgia Mitchell. She had 111 followers, people who legitimately engaged with her content—commenting, liking, and sharing.
The profile picture wasn’t me, but the cover was a photo of me lying down with my shirtless two-year-old. A wholesome moment captured on vacation one month earlier. I’d shared it on my Instagram in a carousel of happy holiday snaps, believing anyone who followed me had good intentions and would enjoy them for what they were.
As I scrolled through the profile, my heart sank deeper and deeper.
The photo I’d shared of me and my son on Mother’s Day was there with a caption I didn’t write: “<3 <3 Seeing you makes me so happy”.
Below that, a photo of Bowie at the football. I’d just posted that the week before.
Then, an image of me, my husband, and my newborn on the day we came home from the hospital. My house in the background, we’re smooching our three-day-old child under another caption I didn’t write: “U + 1 = baby”. (What does that even mean?!)
Finally, I discovered that the first image published to her profile was a photo taken minutes after Bowie was born. It’s the one I used to announce his birth, my husband and I proudly smiling with our firstborn on my chest. She wrote: “Our joy <3 Thank you for making me a mother <3.”
What. A. Liar.
What an invasion of privacy.
Who was this person? What was she trying to achieve? How long had she been following me and pretending to be me? Pretending to be Bowie’s mum? These photos had been collected and strategically posted over a two-year period. A stranger was mining my life to build a false picture of their own. It wasn’t the fact that she’d taken my images that really bothered me; it was the theft of photos of my son. Personal moments. Private moments. And the worst part was that I served them up on a silver platter.
I’m a 32-year-old woman who works in media and grew up being schooled on the dangers of the internet. The discussion around children’s privacy and digital footprints has been happening for years. I should have known better.
I also have a relatively public profile as a television journalist who delivers news into people’s living rooms every night. I chase bad guys down the street and expose criminals to a national audience, so I’m used to copping backlash as a result. I used to fiercely protect my privacy, fearing that one of those criminals would try to find me. But when I had my baby, I dropped my guard. I think I put rose-colored glasses on. I was seeing the world through a different lens—one that was innocent and pure, just like my baby. I felt safe sharing his gorgeous smile and first steps with the internet. It was a way for me to inject more positivity into the world after working in a realm of heaviness for so long.
I had continuously chosen to be ignorant. “Bad things” are what happen to “other people.”
What I find scary is that the second I decided to call this out online, the profile was deleted. I filmed a video identifying the page and captioned it, “I see you, Georgia Mitchell.” Within minutes, supportive followers were trying to find the profile to report it, but it was gone. That tells me the person behind the fake page was following me, and probably had notifications set for when I posted. Is that how frequently they were watching me? Was every photo I’d ever posted of my boy screenshotted and saved in a folder on their phone?
The sad part is that this is probably the best-case scenario. This person may have been building a fake profile for their own satisfaction, or perhaps it was part of a ploy to scam people. I don’t know and I don’t care. But if that’s the worst of it, I consider myself lucky. We all know how much darker it can get. Yet the pull to share wholesome, happy moments of my life and my boy’s life with the people I love overpowered that.
I still believe 95 percent of people have good intentions, and I hate that we’re forced to alter our behavior for the five percent of evil that lives amongst us. It’s why I’m wrestling now with how I approach sharing our lives online in the future.
Part of me wants to keep on keeping on, sharing Bowie’s gorgeous personality and our special life moments because the world deserves more joy, and who doesn’t want to see a cute kid do something silly? But I’ve realized that it’s not worth it. I think this is my wake-up call, a sign to quit while I’m ahead.
At this point in time, I’ve decided to leave what I’ve already posted about Bowie on my page. I figure even if I did delete the pictures, a Google images search would probably bring them all back up anyway. Once it’s published, it lives on the internet forever, or so we’re told.
Moving forward, I think I’ll stick to non-identifiable images. It truly feels like such a shame to have to hide part of our lives, but hiding him is protecting him, and that’s my job. We also have another little boy on the way, and I can guarantee there’ll be no grand birth announcement with his precious face on show for the world. Those pictures will be for our inner circle only. Not for Georgia Mitchell.
I can’t help but go in circles wondering, who is she? Or he? Is it a robot in a dungeon in a faraway land? Is it a person I know? Someone I’d call a friend? Whoever they are, they’ve had a front row seat to my child’s life. Now, I’m not just kicking them out of the auditorium; I’m canceling the show.
If you’re looking for a safer way to share family updates with your inner circle, Tinybeans has your back! The app is a totally private and secure space used by millions of parents looking to protect their kids’ digital footprints. It’s a digital baby journal, time capsule, and photo-sharing app all wrapped in one!
