Following on from
@fireflies post about googling The Meldrums... I had a thought and was shocked.. if you google any of the kids names it comes up with all sorts of personal details and photos. That’s going to be on the internet for their entire life’s! I would have shared links but doesn’t feel right sharing the kids details but if people want to see It themselves they can google it!
The digital footprint of The Meldrums is enormous and has been for several years now. Most children / young teens when they google themselves will find one or two results at the most and usually only if they have been involved in some fundraising, sports achievements, school awards etc. All three of The Meldrums children have 1000's of results through a quick google search with Safiyah's name probably producing the most, as not only is she the eldest so has been around for almost their entire online career but the combination of using the Arabic / Hindi / Swahili from of Sophia with 'Meldrum' produces a relatively unique name. Safiyah Meldrum yields nearly 30,000 results in 0.37 seconds and the majority of those will be related to Safiyah and Poppy Meldrum produces 117,000 but many of those relate to Poppy Meldrum the character in the sitcom 'You Rang M'Lord' !
Not only have they left their children's cached images vulnerable to capture - although most images captured by those with less than honourable intentions will have been taken within minutes of them being put online and already in circulation in places the Meldrums cannot access to remove, but the amount of information out there makes identity theft so easy. Putting predation and impersonation to one side, perhaps the most personally damaging aspect of the digital legacy the girls will experience is the vast resource of material readily available to peer bullies.
Rebecca and Lee may have taken steps to remove youtube videos and delete some followers who they may feel are jealous tattle 'bastards' but even after taking into account purchased followers and genuine fans there will be several 100 if not 1000 of accounts following Rebecca who have a predilection towards paedophilia.
If they are serious about the protection and privacy of their children they need to;
i) systematically go through all 6574 posts removing those images that feature the children on her creator Instagram account
ii) delete The Meldrums youtube channel even though it has no vlogs presently shown if they genuinely have no intention of ever using it again - it serves no purpose. (but then that would remove their PO box number for free gifts
)
iii) spend a considerable amount of time contacting sites such as famous birthdays etc to request removal of girls details citing the 'Rights of A Child' to privacy. Many of these sites could argue that the information they publish had already been placed in the public domain by the children's parents so that no intrusion of privacy has taken place and regretfully Rebecca and Lee will have to accept that they alone are ultimately responsible for trading their children's privacy for monetary gain.