

Ask News.YC: Hacker parents and grandparents: What do you do with photos? - brlewis

I didn't know until the "moms &#38; dads, what do you read?" item was posted and garnered 70 comments that there were so many parents on news.yc.<p>I'm very interested in what you're doing with your photos.  I'm trying to gain as much understanding as I can about parents' and grandparents' relationship to photos of the kids.  I want my site to alleviate photo-related pain and bring photo-related excitement.  The more I know the better my chances of figuring out how to do that.<p>I know news.yc is not exactly a random sample, but I'd still like to know: What do you do with your photos now?  Under ideal circumstances what would you like to do with them?  What are your privacy concerns related to web sites?  What else can you tell me?<p>I welcome thoughts from non-parents too: photos of vacations or activities, photos whose value is at least partly in the story they tell rather than being an entirely artistry.
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pchristensen
Right now I keep them on the hard drive because I'm not quite comfortable with
pictures of my family and children being on the internet. I know it's
irrational because 1) who cares about one kid? and 2) most sites have an
option to make pics private. I'm just a little nervous about not being able to
put the genie back in the bottle. Unexpected consequences are unexpected.

I email some pics and snail mail CD-ROMs to interested family. If I did use a
photo-sharing site, I'd probably use yours because of the email updates
instead of having to login to see pics.

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brlewis
Do your worry about mail servers being compromised? Or about people forwarding
photos without your permission?

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pchristensen
Oh come on, I told you upfront that I was being irrational! OK, mail servers
could be compromised, but I think my pics would be safe by obscurity b/c
intruders would be looking for email addresses, account numbers, passwords,
etc. And I pretty much only forward pics to close family members.

I think having run a blog and looking at logs, it's a little scary how many
random sources from all over the internet (I mean world) can get to any public
facing page. That's a lot scarier than what my aunt or cousin would do with a
picture of my family. But mostly, it's a choice between two things:

1) keep my pics on my hard drive (with private copies on S3 for backup) -
Pros: no effort, little risk. Con: no one else gets to see my pics

2) post them somewhere else: Pro: family, etc can see my pics. Cons: more
effort, more cost (?), the genie is out of the bottle, have to either
administer it properly or publicly expose.

I know that ourdoings is dirt simple and has the privacy features I would
want, which is why I said I'd use it if I ever got around to photo sharing. I
know it's the one I'd recommend to anyone who asks.

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brlewis
I wasn't trying to be accusative. I'm just trying to see what does/doesn't
cause worry.

Thanks for offering to recommend it, but that won't do much good if the people
you recommend it to have the same worries.

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pchristensen
Sorry, I meant to put a ;) after my !. Don't worry, most people aren't as
[secretive | paranoid | aware] as I am.

