I saw on Good Morning America last week that people's online photo albums can be viewed by others. They showed a couple of cases of people who had used the flickr site finding their photos put in advertisements without their permission. They said to check your account because it could be set on the default position of "public." I wanted to tell you this so you can check your accounts. When I went to mine on photobucket.com, it was set to public and I was able to change it to private. I hadn't even know about doing that.
I personally don't think it's any big secret that photos are publiclly accessible. Unless you have a password protected site, then you should already realize that anyone can see your pictures. A friend of mine does photography as a hobby and has a flickr site, but she has been lucky enough to have several people BUY the rights to her pictures to use in advertisements. Yes, probably many more pics are being used without credit but there's no way around that unless she password protects it or puts a watermark on her pics.
Even with "private" settings that are available online at photo sites, you shouldn't even post photos that you wouldn't mind being "out there" to the world because they CAN get out there even with the privacy settings.
I've also always assumed photos posted online are able to be viewed by anyone who happens to stumble across them. Online usually means access for all. Privacy settings usually don't mean much to someone who is determined.
Well, I had a username and a password so I thought it was protected. I have had them on there for purposes of resizing or posting them on other forums.
There is no true privacy on the Internet. Sites may say they offer privacy, and indeed they may do so, but any site can be hacked. And disgruntled employees have access. Anything uploaded to the Internet will be, at some time or other, viewable and downloadable by anyone. Keep that in mind beforehand if you expect privacy or copyrights.
The forums I belonged to had their membership controlled...including one just for my extended family, but of course someone could have taken them...however, not my whole account.
just remember to read that end user agreement before agreeing to anything, because you have a username and password in order to post does not mean you need one in order to view anything... (example, this forum)
