Can You Trust Photo Sharing Websites With Your Photos?

A Reputable Photo Sharing Website Will Never Steal Your Photos

Any good photo sharing website offers certain restrictions to help protect your photos, including restricting access. Before signing up to any site, check their policy and security measures to ensure your photos are as safe as they can be.

Reputable photo sharing websites will never steal your photos for use in any way as it would discredit them in a hurry. Word spreads quickly online, so it wouldn't be in their best interests to jeopardize your trust.

But photo sharing websites can only do so much. Any time your photo is displayed on someone's browser, it can be saved to their computer. This might not be a problem if they are using them only for their own home use. Problems arise when they pass the photos off as their own.

To minimize risk, photo sharing websites offer the following tools:

1. Set privacy levels on your photos to restrict people from stealing your images.
2. Restrict access to people you select.
3. Use a watermark software program that imprints your mark on your images to identify them as your own, which will make your images unusable by others.
4. Copyright your photos (some sites will automatically add a copyright notice to your photos).

Plus, you can only upload low res versions of your photos so that if they are stolen, there is less that can be done with your images.

The photo sharing websites also store your photos in a secure area on their server, so they are less likely to be stolen in bulk, or interfered with in any way. Some sites create backups for added security should something happen to that one server or series of files.

As an added safety bonus, some photo sharing websites like Flickr enable you to "set a global preference" to your photos so no one except invited recipients can download them. This feature activates a transparent image over the photo. It doesn't prevent people from downloading from their browser, but it does serve as a hindrance.

Another option to consider: apply a free "Creative Commons" license to your images. This adds a specific kind of copyright to your images, but it doesn't protect them from download theft. It simply notifies viewers that your photos are not in the public domain. (Be sure you understand what this means though: you are giving people certain rights to your photos -- for example, the right to use your photos for non-commercial purposes -- so make sure you want to do that.)

It might take several different features to protect your images on photo sharing websites. That's why we suggested several options above.

When looking for a safe place to store your images online, carefully review photo protection features. When you see how much care the photo sharing websites put into providing quality service, you'll know you can trust them with your photo collections.

Unfortunately though, one of the downsides of photo sharing is that there is no such thing as perfect security. Almost any security system can be broken. However, given the benefits of photo sharing -- and by taking the precautions we outlined above -- you can minimize the risks and enjoy sharing your photos on photo sharing websites.