It’s almost time to send the kids back to school, and that means Facebook will soon be flooded with those cute back-to-school pictures.

But what information should you exclude from those pictures? And how much information is too much?

We spoke to experts who say any information we put out there gets stored somewhere, even if our accounts are set to private.

“We love seeing them from our friends and family, but we're certainly creating a digital footprint every time we do that,” said Heather Starr Fiedler, professor of social media at Point Park University. "We're still creating this digital log of information that can be used for lots of different reasons by lots of different people."

Starr Fiedler says to stay away from posting any identifying information like your child’s full name, the school they attend, their teacher’s name or classroom number.

You should also avoid photos of your child wearing their school uniform, especially if the school’s logo is on it.

Make sure your street sign, house number or your child’s bus number is not in the photo as well.

"Those are the things that I think are the most dangerous that we want to try to avoid," Starr Fiedler added.

In addition to scammers, in the most extreme cases, you could be putting your child in harm's way by unknowingly offering up sensitive information to child predators.

“Child predators online are looking to build profiles for people to build relationships, and they can use that information at a later date to form a trusting relationship,” said Scott Argio, assistant special agent in charge at the FBI’s Pittsburgh office.

Argio says privacy settings can help, but there is one thing to keep in mind.

“The main thing about posting things on social media is, you're posting it for the world to see," Argio said.

Starr Fiedler says parents should also be cautious of putting any information out there that would help someone document you or your child’s habits.

Like hints about when your kids get picked up, dropped off or start their after-school activities.

“That's telling them we're not with our children right now. We're somewhere else," she said.

Starr Fiedler adds that once your child has their own social media accounts, make sure you have those important conversations about safety and privacy.

The classic problems cities face are poverty, traffic, public safety, energy and water. Some are turning to technology in hopes of addressing some of those issues. 

"There is this desperate need for improving living conditions," said Philip Bane, managing director of the Smart Cities Council.

He's part of an organization dedicated to helping cities navigate smart city technologies — a billion dollar global industry.

"Nashville is doing something where they're putting in sensors to measure water flow in all these places it could be dangerous," Bane said. 

Nashville — prone to urban flooding — is installing thousands of sensors for early warning detection.

"How does that flooding affect someone who's disabled, or who's an immigrant and doesn't speak English," Bane asked. "That's the key to being smart. It's not that you collect the data. It's what you do with it."

Homayra Yusufi is a refugee from Afghanistan who is now an advocate, alarmed by a program in San Diego that was paused over privacy concerns. Streetlights were equipped with LED bulbs, cameras and sensors that were capable of monitoring air quality and optimizing traffic and parking. It promised to pay for itself through energy cost savings.

"Our communities have historically been affected by over-surveillance, especially after September 11," Yusufi said. "We had never heard of the lights. They were not only installed — thousands throughout San Diego — but they had also given exclusive access to the police department, which did not have a use policy."

The program was costing taxpayers millions of dollars more than expected. Community groups joined together calling for oversight and transparency about what it does with the data.

San Diego is now developing new policies with input from organizations, privacy advocates and technology experts. Yusufi hopes as interest grow in other cities, privacy is top of mind.

This story was originally published by Amanda Brandeis of Newsy.

In recent years, the Olympic games have become a target for cyber espionage, surveillance and other financially-motivated attacks. 

The NTT Corporation, which provided network security for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, said there were more than 450 million cyberattacks launched during the 16 days of competition.

That's 2.5 times more than the number of attacks on the 2012 London Olympics.

Beijing won’t be much different.

A report from cybersecurity analysis firm Recorded Future found ransomware groups may try to encrypt machines used at the games, in part because it could lead to a significant profit, given that teams or officials might need to pay ransom to regain access to those systems as soon as possible. 

But experts think the biggest threat is possible cyber espionage and surveillance of athletes and visitors by the Chinese government.

The United States, Team Great Britain, Australia, Germany and Netherlands all urged their athletes and visitors to leave their personal phones and laptops back at home out of fear that they will be monitored by the government at the games and thereafter. 

"China's national security laws create a really different environment for privacy than what people are used to when they're in other countries, where privacy legislation places significant constraints on the government's ability to collect and use data," Robert Potter, CEO and co-founder of Internet 2.0 said.

"The identifiers for your phone are automatically collected, so that information is gone the moment you hit a mobile phone tower in China."

Potter's cybersecurity company Internet 2.0 examined some of the software being provided by official sponsors to the game and found that the Virtual Private Network service offered to athletes, which lets users hide and protect their internet traffic from being accessed by third parties, collected a "significant amount of user data" beyond what was needed to run the app. 

Newsy's research showed the camera and photo libraries were required to be accessed by the app, and they just didn't seem to be a particularly good reason or justifiable reason to think that that was normal for a VPN application.  

A separate report from Citizen Lab found serious privacy issues with the MY2022 Olympics app, which is required to be used by all attendees at the Beijing games.

For example, it contained an encryption flaw that could expose passport details and medical information of users. 

Both the IOC and Beijing Olympic Committee have rejected claims that there are security concerns with the MY2022 Olympics App. 

Experts told Newsy the only sure-fire way that visitors to the Olympics can protect themselves is by using new devices and accounts only while inside China in order to protect their personal information, then throw the devices away after the games are over.

China is committed to having open and accessible internet available to athletes that are within the "COVID bubble," but there is a line between open internet access and unmonitored internet access — and China is making no guarantees around the latter. 

This story was first reported by Tyler Adkisson at Newsy.

Google is taking a step back, recently announcing they won’t track users as they browse the internet after ending support for third-party cookies.

These cookies have been allowing digital advertising and ad tech to thrive.

”That ad is placing a third-party cookie in your browser, so what's happening is that Chrome and other browsers that are doing this, are taking that cookie and they are reselling it to someone else. So that’s what they're saying they are going to stop doing,” said Donald McLaughlin, a cybersecurity consultant.

He said while Google is not going to support third-party cookies, they are still keeping some of your information.

“They're not going to stop tracking you based on your searches or email,” McLaughlin said.

The more information of ours that’s out there, the bigger the push to keep it out of those companies’ hands.

“We see a movement towards more privacy,” he said.

“Surveillance capitalism has been growing over the last 20 years. The technological abilities to frankly spy on people and track their every movement are really profound,” said Dr. Jen Golbeck, Professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland.

So what does this mean for your privacy?

“This move by Google suggests some of the big players are starting to think maybe we don't need to track every individual in every way we technically can,” Dr. Golbeck said. “There may be ways to make the money they want and not keep all that individual information”

One concept is to group people together, rather than targeting individuals.

“The idea here I think is to create groups of customers instead of individually identifiable tracking opportunities so they can pre-segment these customer groups for advertisers based on their buying behaviors,” said Melissa Akaka, an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Denver.

For ad companies, it’s going to change the way they present those advertisements. For brands, it could change their customer relationships.

“Companies are going to have to really think through who their customers are and how they can build longer lasting relationships with them,” Akaka said.

Although Google is making this change, not many other big tech companies are following suit.

“Apple is really the only other big tech company we see pushing privacy in a really serious way, and frankly more seriously than Google is,” Dr. Golbeck said. “Facebook hasn't really shown an interest in reducing that kind of individual knowledge, that's really the cornerstone of their business at this point.”

She said Google is simply getting ahead of future policy.

“I don’t think the tech companies care what people want. They care about making money. But if people want their privacy protected and they're going to push for regulation that affects the company, they're going to respond in that way and I think they see that coming. There is this new public understanding and push for more privacy,” Dr. Golbeck said.