'AITA for 'hacking' into my SIL's accounts and taking down a post about my daughter?' UPDATED
"AITA for 'hacking' into my SIL's accounts and taking a post about me and my daughter down?"
I am a mother to a 7 year old girl. For various reasons, there are several people who I do not want having any form of access to her, and that includes photos and social media.
I don't post about having a daughter, keep my profiles professional, and don't post photos with her in them. I'm not an idiot, I know once my daughter is old enough for social media she will put pictures of herself online, but by then we will have had a serious talk about internet safety, the kind of talk I can't have with a 7 year old.
I've been with my fiance for 3 years now, and a few weeks ago he proposed. We told his sister yesterday over a video call. My daughter was with us on the call. My SIL has known my daughter since she was 4, she is really good with her, and she knows the rules about social media. I've had to remind her of these rules more than once because SIL runs a "mummy blog",
and her daughter is only a couple months older than mine and the two are good friends, so if she takes photos of her kid and mine is in the photos, I ask her to crop my kid out. She has thousands of followers on her blog and social media, and is popular enough to have been sponsored a few times, but she's not anywhere near living off of it and has a 9-5 job.
A few hours after the video chat was over I got a notification for SIL's blog. SIL has posted about our engagement, and alongside it she's put a screenshot of us mid-call, with my daughter showing off the ring, and cross posted it to all her social media, where she's tagged us in it, and the post is a long piece that makes clear that my daughter isn't my fiance's child.
This is the exact thing I don't want on the internet. Proof that I have a daughter, alongside my name/picture, posted by someone in my fiance's family with a massive following, on 5 different websites. I un-tagged myself from what I could, but my full name (first, middle and last name) was on the post and still searchable.
We called SIL and asked her nicely to take the post down. She refused. My fiance then asked her not-so-nicely and she refused again, and hung up on us. I had a minor freak out, and my fiance said his sister had the same password for everything when they were kids so if I wanted he could try and get in and take the posts down himself. I said yes.
The password was the same so he logged in and took it all down, then texted SIL saying what we'd done and that he'd hoped it wouldn't come to this.
She's furious with us, and made a whole new post about how we "hacked" her account, and since then it's been non stop messages from her as well as my fiance's immediate family saying we overreacted, invaded her privacy, and that we should have just asked her again to take it down before "going nuclear". Are we TA?
What do you think? Was she wrong to log in to her SIL's account and delete the post? This is what top commenters had to say:
neuroctopus said:
NTA. You were forced to do this, to protect your child. Her blog and popularity are certainly not as important as your kid. The internet is forever, and honestly I’d be furious at this. She is incredibly selfish. What reason did she give for refusing to take it down or stop posting about you?
momo12fish said:
NTA period. She's a dick taking pictures of you without consent
PurrrrmanentFixture said:
NTA - She invaded your privacy and from the sounds of it could even have put you at risk. I can't know your circumstances but you described panicking and freaking out. That doesn't happen unless you're scared. And being scared doesn't happen unless you feel at risk.
She essentially doxxed you. There's nothing about that she can justify when she KNEW the rules you had set regarding your family and internet privacy. Instead of doing as you asked and apologising, she doubled down and dug her heels. She's in the wrong here. She's throwing a tantrum because she was called on it. And everyone knows to change their passwords periodically. No one else she can blame.
Bug_a_boo_Mama said:
NTA. She invaded your privacy. If she continues to post you or your daughter tell her you will seek legal action against her. Might be enough to get her to stop
[deleted] said:
Yikes, especially about your first middle and last name being searchable. People who do blogs and such need to understand that not everyone in their life wants to have information out there like that. Using pictures or videos of family and friends that have made it clear that they dont want themselves or their kids involved is an ahole move. You are NTA
lollyak16 said:
NTA. She didn't have your permission. The audacity wtf
byebyelovie said:
NTA- your life, your business, your daughter your rules! Sil was out of line and I think she did it to be an a$$hole! She knew you wouldn’t like being tagged and pic taken of your daughter posted. She’s definitely TA!
OP later shared this brief update:
Update: spoken to a lawyer who has a cease and desist ready to go when/if we need it and said that if SIL did pursue legal action she'd come off way worse than us and we'd get off close to scott free by comparison.