I'm back in Kyoto now, well, not permanently but I'll be staying here for a few months before going back to the Philippines again.
I caught up with my old elementary classmates and neighborhood friends, I had a great time (it's been a full year since I came home). Not until my old classmate sent a picture of me to our group chat in a wacky pose. A photo I hadn't seen before, but I'm sure it was me. I still have the same shirt, just tucked away in my dresser.
I was like, "Where'd you find that?" Slightly annoyed AND amuse at the same time. How come he has that photo? I don't even remember taking that one. And he replied: "It was on our school's website!" and he followed it with: "Look, there's more!" and he sent the remaining photos he gathered from the school's website.
My former classmates were just laughing at how funny we looked on those photos. I did too but I'm just weirded out that our school never archived those after all this time. I got curious so I went to check it out myself. And there, photos from the early 2010s up until last year are publicly available online. Some are blurry and pixelated, some are in HD, and our faces were never blurred. There was this collection, in which we went to the U.S. for a school trip, our nametags were not blurred as well.
You might be thinking that it's not a big deal, it probably isn't but with everything I know now about child safety especially internet privacy, I'm just kinda creeped out.
The one thing I was weirded out most was, the elementary and junior high school photo galleries were public but the high school and the university one doesn't even have a photo gallery in the first place.
I guess I'll just email them to sort this thing out. I even asked my mom if she consented on this but she doesn't remember 🤷🏻♂️
by crackedpinkytoe