Should I worry about making my picasa web albums public?

I choose the public option for all my albums in Picasaweb, these mostly (>90%) contain pictures of my children which I share with my family. Ever so often somebody I don't know adds me as a favorite, at current count I have 7 people in my fan list (non of whom I know) and only three of them have any public albums.

Is this creepy? I take care not to upload any pictures that may attract perverts

What would you recommend, private by default or continue with public?

Motti

Posted 2009-12-03T20:38:39.873

Reputation: 499

You can share private albums on Picasaweb by sending your friends the unlisted link to the album and not posting it anywhere online. If it somehow does get into the hands of people you'd rather not see it, you can reset the unlisted link. – nedned – 2009-12-04T02:41:03.120

Answers

private - never disclose more than needed. after all, what for ? why would you ?

you wouldn't go about giving photos of your kids to strangers in the street, right ?

Rook

Posted 2009-12-03T20:38:39.873

Reputation: 21 622

2My theory on this is pretty much the same. If in doubt, make it private. If the album truly contains stuff I don't care about then, meh, whatever. The only time I would explicitly want to make stuff public is if I was promoting my photography business and the like. – JMD – 2009-12-03T20:51:30.083

i don't store photos of private nature that i don't want strangers to see on the internet, public or otherwise. even private accounts are not safe (and most certainly not with the notorious 'doers of good', who happen to own Picasa).

but then, that's just paranoid old me.

Molly7244

Posted 2009-12-03T20:38:39.873

Reputation:

although i have much more faith in google, than pretty much anyone else - even they did have a few lapses regarding making private stuff public accidentally and so ... i won't even start about other (facebook, myspace, ... your choice). so yes, nicely put. – Rook – 2009-12-03T21:02:41.107

Keep in mind that ANYTHING you put online, is retained. So making something private is not just a good idea, but a smart way to keep photos from getting into where they shouldn't - technically.

As it was said, if you worry about private photos getting into the wrong hands, don't post them online, private or not, its ONLINE.

Jakub

Posted 2009-12-03T20:38:39.873

Reputation: 3 111

As soon as your pictures are publicly visible you lose any control over what happens to the pictures, how they are used or in what context or in what form or state of modification. You can't change your mind later, as people might have copied them to somewhere else. You most likely won't have legal remedies either as the internet is international and offending parties may be anywhere in the world.

user12889

Posted 2009-12-03T20:38:39.873

Reputation: 1 743

"You can't change your mind later, as people might have copied them to somewhere else." Quoted for emphasis. This applies to any content you make public online, including blogs, news article comments, etc. – Miss Cellanie – 2009-12-04T00:02:03.817