Ethical Hackers

There are many websites offering Free Photo or image sharing Services across the internet. Without any hassle one can share the image with Friends and Families. Some of the leading Image Hosting providers are Flickr , Picasa Web , Photobucket and much more.. Here the question is,

Are these providers facilitate any security mechanism to protect the user pictures or not ?

Ofcourse, Yes ! It is must to know if you already using or planning to use this kind of services for sharing your pictures.  Its not fun to see an intrusion of a user privacy. In this Internet Jungle it is must for every single user to maintain his or her privacy. The recent issue that our Research Team idetified is Misuse of Pictures posted in Free Image Hosting websites. Thats the reason i am writing this article to make you aware of giving protection to your pictures.

First, let me tell you one thing. It doesn’t mean that you should not send / receive any pictures via internet. You can send / receive pictures and videos in internet without worries by taking care of certain options, must be in care while sending or receiving them. Here i took Flickr to explain about the safety measure you can take.

You may click on the image to see enlarged image. Its the Account page. Once you logged into Flickr Image Hosting Service.

• Go to the page that says Your Account.
• There you can see the above stated tabs.
• Now, move to Privacy and Permissions tab.
• There you can see various Global Settings applied to your account.
• This is the place where you need to configure to prevent access of your Flickr Album Folders by UnAuthorized People or Search Engines.

You may noticed while searching for image in Google with a strings like Beach, Trips, Tour, etc., it pulls some images from Picasaweb and Flickr Albums. This because of the user who owns that account allows public access to his / her Album Folder. If the user properly configured his / her Flickr Privacy & Permissions Area, then the access may be restricted and privacy could be ensure.

Similar to this we can apply several permission levels in other image hosting services like picasaweb and photobucket.

All these info provided here are in care of Beginner level and Intermediate Internet users. The increase in Public Photographs misuse can be avoided in future if one understands the services offered by a Website before subscribing or registering to it. Give time to Read about the options available in a Web Application or in a Software.

We will be happy, if you spend a minute to share your idea or comment with us. For all your queries and feedbacks you can write to us write@ethicalhackers.in .

Happy Learning !