Are your photos safe online?
I'm a Shutterfly customer, and I was happy to get an email this week saying that they weren't planning on deleting my photos. The real point of the email was to highlight a disturbing trend towards other online photo processing companies starting to do just that.
The Kodak Gallery terms of service says:
Special Note to Members: In order to maintain free storage of your images on the Site, you need to make purchases totaling at least $4.99 or $19.99, depending upon your storage usage, at least once every 12 months. If you do not meet the applicable purchase requirement, your images may be deleted. You should keep a copy of each image you upload in a secure place. We are not responsible for deleted images.
HP Snapfish has a similar provision:
A condition of Membership is your "Active Participation" in the Service. Active Participation is defined as sending in film or purchasing photo merchandise, including reprints and enlargements, through the Service at least once every 365 days. Purchases through Snapfish third-party advertisers, including HP Home & Home Office Store, do not count towards Active Participation.
I hadn't logged into Shutterfly since 2007 and so I'm both happy and lucky that they have a more enlightened policy.
Even if these services aren't deleting your photos you still might be surprised how hard it is to get them out. If you want to download high resolution photos you usually have to pay to do it.
The nightmare here is if you upload directly from your camera, clear the memory card to make room for new photos and then discover too late that the terms of service you didn't read carefully now means that all your photos are lost.
I'm sure we all know someone with a digital camera who doesn't know how vulnerable they are to data loss. Make it a late new year's resolution to help them set up reliable offsite backup before it's too late.
posted by Rob on Friday, April 17, 2009
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