The Data Protection Commission spent €615,000 on a viral campaign warning parents about the dangers of sharing photographs and personal information about their children online.
The Pause Before You Post advertisement showed a young girl being approached by strangers who appeared to know intimate details about her life.
The commission said €217,000 was spent advertising the campaign on television, in cinemas and on video-on-demand services.
A further €14,375 was spent on paid social media as part of the campaign, which was launched nationally last November and shown during The Late Late Toy Show. Details of the other spending was redacted.
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An internal business case said so-called “sharenting” could allow photos of children to be misused, including through artificial intelligence.
It said information posted innocently by parents could also provide strangers with details about a child’s movements, routines, interests and other personal information.
The commission said the campaign subsequently generated more than 150 million views worldwide, including 45 million views on its own social media channels.
It said the ad was also seen by more than one million people in Irish cinemas during its six-week run. An analysis following the campaign showed that seven in 10 parents of primary schoolchildren in Ireland had seen the advert in one form or another.
The DPC said further analysis indicated it had been the most-watched Irish ad of the past five years.
A business case for the campaign said projected costs were €250,000 for production of the video advert and €350,000 for buying advertising space.
It also envisaged spending €25,000 on a public attitudes survey on the prevalence of “sharenting” in Ireland and France. This research would focus on “the type of information parents share, how often, on which platforms, for what purposes, and whether respondents are aware of the potential risks involved in this practice”.
The business case said the commission had obligations under GDPR to promote awareness of risks, rules, safeguards and rights when it came to personal information.
It explained that children needed specific protection because they were often less aware of the risks involved. Potential dangers included the creation of child sexual abuse material and providing “bad actors with a roadmap to a child’s whereabouts”.
Other risks included “embarrassment for [a] child as they grow older and bath-time photos/videos of tantrums/meltdowns etc are available online for the world to see”.
It said this type of material could even have implications for future opportunities including job prospects and university places.
Asked about the campaign, a Data Protection Commission spokesman said: “The video went viral online and reached a wide audience. The campaign received extensive media attention domestically. It also attracted international media coverage from countries that included Australia, USA, Canada, South Africa, Brazil and the UK.”
