Albums/Pictures

Hi,

It is certainly possible that a person could download pictures from an album, so I would recommend exercising caution in two ways:

1) The obvious is being careful with what we upload. Although the site is PG-13 and only allows a restricted remit of pictures to begin with, there is a small amount of leeway given to images which would be described as 'sexually suggestive'. For example, if a person has taken a shirtless selfie for a reason which doesn't actually require they be shirtless. In those cases, the risk of somebody taking these types of pictures has the potential to cause embarrassment. If we only publish pictures we wouldn't object to our grandparents seeing, it will minimise the consequences and anxieties from that breach of privacy.

2) Paying attention to the privacy permissions which you set for your albums. Each album can be set so that it can either be accessed by yourself, people you follow, or to any member whatsoever. I strongly recommend people stick to limiting albums to people they follow, as this allows *you* to ultimately control who has trusted access to any of your albums. This is the reason the rules stipulate that any sexually suggestive content must go in a private album of this type, to ensure that the member is regulating who is able to see these types of images. From a security perspective, it also provides the Admin team with a much stronger capacity to assist you should somebody violate your privacy and steal your pictures. For example, let's say that a user downloaded your pictures and pretended to be you on Instagram. If that violation came from this site, from an album only accessible by people you follow, then we have a short list of user's we can trace the activity of and see who has been accessing that album. That list might still be somewhat long, but it'll be much shorter than the potential 80,000 members who'd be suspects if the album was open to anybody and everybody.

There are additional security measures which can be implemented within the Gallery, such as the site automatically inserting watermarks on any uploaded images, but these are not things we have implemented at present. There's concerns that would need to be discussed with staff and members there, as editing a user's content to insert our logo (or something similar to this) is quite intrusive and potentially acting in a risk averse manner, despite the best of intentions it would be done in. In my mind, I sort of think the focus on album permissions is a more happy medium between dealing with everyday privacy risks and respecting a member's right to privacy and media ownership.

So, in the meantime, just pay close attention to the privacy settings for each of your albums, and contact the staff team if you have any concerns about your content being stolen. The more restricted an album is, the easier it should be to locate the perpetrator of a privacy breach.

Martin.