My parents used to say this over and over and over and over while I was growing up. It's engrained into my brain. "If it's not yours, don't touch it!" 


Funny how the repetition of such a simple phrase to a child brings about a life lesson carried on into adulthood. As an adult that phrase really seems like common sense but APPARENTLY it is a product of nurture and not nature. Maybe not everyone's parents were as awesome as mine... because some of you need some serious home training.

What am I getting at?

A series of frustrating and unfortunate circumstances in which pictures from my blog and posted only to my blog have been found... in other locations (cough, cough Facebook).

Now, I KNOW my kid is a cutie-patootie. I get that. However, please realize that he is MY CHILD and his pictures are MINE! Also, as "public" as my blog is, it can not be found through search engines and isn't listed with blogger. It can only be found when it is shared. Therefore, for the most part, only people that I WANT to see these pictures get to see them.

Another important factor is that I'm friends with more people than I should be on Facebook. I'm friends with hundreds of people and a large chunk are friends of friends, random people I met once at an event, people from high school I didn't talk to then and still don't talk to now, "Internet Friends" that I've never met in person but we have something in common (blogs, dogs, etc.)... you get the idea. The BEAUTY of Facebook (and google+ for that matter) is the PRIVACY SETTINGS. I can share things with certain groups of people and not others and block people that aren't my friends from seeing anything but my name!

The point is that when I post my child's pictures in a blog post (or in a private album on Facebook), I EXPECT them to stay there.

Let me just say that when I posted a blog with pictures of my precious little boy that have only been shown on my blog and then I log into Facebook to find them in a public album on someone else's Facebook page with no privacy settings I get just a little (read VERY VERY VERY EXTREMELY) angry.

Am I blowing something simple out of proportion... part of me says well maybe a little... but then the mommy in me comes out and says "Oh, Heck No!" It's a sad reality that there are some freaks and psychos out there... especially on the internet. I do not want my child's picture subject to the vast public that is all of the internet. I have my privacy settings in place for a reason and that reason is to protect my child.

With all of that mumbo jumbo venting madness out of the way, you will now notice that my pictures from here on out (and past blogs as I have time) are no longer clickable. You can't click to get a bigger view and you can't right click and download and save them. Sorry Charlie. If it's not yours, DON'T TOUCH IT!

I know, I know, now you are scared people are going to steal your little kiddos too and you want to make your pics unclickable as well. No worries, I'll share my secret!

How did I do it? Some ridic HTML magic.

So, obviously the pic above is totally clickable. In order to make it unclickable, go into the HTML version of your blog post (in blogger: up at the top on the left next to compose). Every picture has an HTML code that looks something like this:


<  a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rf0zDgCp0y4/T1VI5OOKdFI/AAAAAAAAA78/8vxertzdb0c/s1600/IMG_1383.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><  img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rf0zDgCp0y4/T1VI5OOKdFI/AAAAAAAAA78/8vxertzdb0c/s320/IMG_1383.jpg" width="320" /><  /a><  /div>


(minus a few spaces I had to add in order to make the code appear as a code and not a picture!)


When you find that code, delete the following highlighted pieces of it:

<  a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rf0zDgCp0y4/T1VI5OOKdFI/AAAAAAAAA78/8vxertzdb0c/s1600/IMG_1383.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><  img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rf0zDgCp0y4/T1VI5OOKdFI/AAAAAAAAA78/8vxertzdb0c/s320/IMG_1383.jpg" width="320" /><  /a><  /div>


once that piece is deleted, your picture is unclickable! YES!


Let's review:

If it's not yours, don't touch it! (especially if it's a pic of my baby!)