Women beware. A cautionary tale.

The photographs in this posting are for illustration purposes only, and are not photos of the person named in the article.

Ashley Skiby, 22, went into the Connected Wireless store at the Gateway Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah, to trade in her old phone for credit toward a new phone and Sprint calling plan. At the time her phone was dead, so she told store manager Matthew Kuyath she wanted to recharge it and delete some photos of herself of a "sensitive nature." Kuyath assured her no one would look at her photos, that they were done as a "mass deletion."

A few days later Skiby went back to the store with a relative, and saw another employee helping a customer delete photos from a phone. She saw her old phone sitting where she'd left it. She again expressed her desire to delete the photos, but Kuyath told her that the phone was now property of Sprint.

Less than a month later Ashley Skiby bumped into Matthew Kuyath at the mall. After a conversation, Kuyath got out his phone and showed Skiby several of the pictures she'd been worried about, now displayed on his phone. Later on that day Kuyath sent Skiby a message containing one of her pictures.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune of November 2, 2009, in a copyrighted article by Erin Alberty, Skiby is suing Sprint-Nextel and the store. Matthew Kuyath, who is a convicted sex offender, was fired from the Connected Wireless store earlier this year.

This should be a cautionary tale about the dangers of taking pictures of yourself that you wouldn't want others to see.

I have a feeling many of these pictures, available on several web sites on the Internet, weren't meant to be seen in public. In many cases I believe that girls take pictures of themselves for boyfriends or husbands, either at the guy's request or as a way of being provocative. At some point those pictures might "escape" the private domain and become public property on the far-reaching world wide web.

The pictures I've used as examples are actually tame. If you've seen many of these pictures you know there are a lot out there that show a whole lot more than these.

First of all, girls, thank you for taking these pictures so I can see them. Sorry if you're embarrassed, but if it helps, you're beautiful.

Second, when you take these pictures and send them to someone just figure you are sending them out to the entire world. As soon as you say, "Now, don't show these to anyone...these are just for you," your boyfriend is hitting the upload button to a site that specializes in this sort of photo.