A Fort Worth mom got the shock of her life when she spotted her baby's picture on someone else's Facebook profile, and it was someone whom she'd never met.
Tiffany Treese takes tons of photos of her 1-year-old girl, and said she posted one to a closed group on Facebook.
But what happened next surprised her.
"All of a sudden," said Treese, "I saw someone, who I have no idea, posted in a group. And my attention was brought to the profile picture, which was my daughter."
Treese said the incident really upset her.
"To not know someone and to have them have her picture, it was very disturbing," she said.
The stranger's profile was in another language, but Treese thinks the people behind the profile may have been trying to pose as a mom to sell items to other moms on Facebook.
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Treese thought she'd done everything right. Her privacy settings were strict and the closed group she contributed the photograph to had only 60 members.
But experts caution that you should assume anything you put on the Internet is public.
Allen Gwinn, a computer security expert at Southern Methodist University, said in most cases people who snag photos are not looking for you in particular.
"Usually what happens is pictures that are pulled down at random," said Gwinn. "They don't have her name or kids' names on them, but it's some picture that got chosen at random."
Treese said it took five days after she reported her daughter's photo for Facebook to disable the stranger's account. She enlisted friends to spread the word on social media by posting a screen shot of the profile that had her daughter's picture.
Facebook told us of Treese's situation: "This type of content violates our standards. Once a parent or guardian reports it to us, we work quickly to remove it."
Facebook has a special page for reporting problems involving children under 13.
While Treese said she'll still post pictures of her daughter, she will be more careful about where. She also said each picture of her little girl will carry a watermark.
Gwinn reminds parents to not forget those privacy settings. Even though they are not foolproof, they do help. "Facebook privacy is really important because if someone is trolling across and they come across your page they move on to the next one," Gwinn said.
