Blake Miller of Fast Company has this chilling article:

Jenny had become a victim of a growing—and to many, alarming—new community that exists primarily on Instagram: baby role-players. Instagram users like Nikki steal images of babies and children off the Internet, give them a new name, and claim them as their own. Sometimes they create entire fake families.

The sad thing is there is relatively little protection to be had from the law in situations like this. You may be able to sue someone using your likeness in a commercial venture without your permission, but non-commercial use of the nature described above is rarely protected in the same way.

Instagram users should review their privacy settings by reading the company’s help pages about controlling your visibility and setting photos and video as viewable only to approved followers.

Keep this in mind, though: even if you set your content as private, sharing a link to a photo or video on a social network like Twitter or Facebook will allow anyone with that link to view it.

People who do steal your photos and pretend they’re your child or your child’s parent are violating Instagram’s Terms of Service, which prohibits impersonation, among other things (emphasis mine):

You must not defame, stalk, bully, abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate people or entities […]

The Fast Company article to which I link above includes a statement from Instagram that the company does remove the stolen images when users report such activity.

This story is another lesson to be mindful of not only what you share online, but how you share it. After all, a private company like Instagram could simply choose to ignore concerns like these, and users would have no recourse. Social networks can be a rich and vibrant way to stay in touch, but we are all responsible for what and how we share.