Facebook-owned Instagram can sell your photos

Your photos could be sold and displayed for commercial purposes, if sweeping changes to photo-sharing site Instagram's terms and conditions go ahead.

The hugely popular photo app, which was acquired by Facebook earlier this year, has announced some major changes to its terms of use and privacy policy which come into effect on January 16.

The specific addition in the updated terms and conditions in regards to this is pretty straightforward. It reads:

"To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."

Let's break that statement down a little.

Say you go on a trip and take photos of your hotel room, your meal or even yourself sunbathing by the poolside. Potentially, the hotel could pay Instagram/Facebook for the use of those photos, and display them on their own website or marketing material -- with no financial compensation to you.

Where the terms of service talks about metadata, this specifically means the information stored in the photograph that identify the time, the GPS co-ordinates (ie the exact location; unless location services are turned off), the phone used and more besides (like keywords used to tag the photo).

Your likeness, is of course, your photo. So who knows, a photo of yourself in your bikini drinking a particular beverage could be plastered on a billboard by the drink manufacturer. (This may well run foul of privacy laws, but there doesn't seem to be anything in the small print that suggests this kind of thing couldn't happen somewhere down the line.)

No doubt that as this story hits the news, disgruntled users will cry foul and Instagram/Facebook may well water down the terms and conditions -- they could at the very least, make this clause something you're able to opt-out of.

In another worrying development, Instagram also says:

"You acknowledge that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such."

This could be in breach of advertising codes of practice, which state that such content should clearly be identified as such.

Sources: For more on this, check out the Cnet article about the topic as well as the new Instagram terms of use and privacy policy.

How your private photos Facebook can be made public

A few months back we discussed Facebook photo album privacy settings and how you can make sure your bosses don't see those Christmas party shots, for instance. And a few days ago we explained what content is viewable when you are logged out, including photos.

But there are still a couple of ways in which your photo albums - and your friends' pics - can be seen by people outside your immediate circle (including ones who refuse to join Facebook) regardless of privacy settings. You would think that if you set your album to be viewed only by 'friends' that no one else could see them.

This isn't necessarily true.

Unique album URL method:
When logged in and viewing your photos, there's a special album URL (web address) displayed at the bottom of the screen. It takes the form (where the Xs represent random numbers/letters):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=xxxxx&l=xxxxxx&id=YOURFACEBOOKIDNUMBER

This is a unique URL and if people don't know it they won't be able to access your album (there was a loophole last year, now fixed, that allowed people to easily circumvent this by guessing the string of characters the Xs represented). However, anyone who has the URL will be able to view the album even if they aren't on Facebook -- yes, even if you only wanted friends to view the album. So, if you email an album's address to 20 mates and they send it to all their friends, a lot more people than you intended could be viewing the album.

So, before we send that unique URL to our friends, we will consider who else might be told about it and the implications not only for ourselves, but for our friends.

Image URL method:
Go to anyone's album and click on an image thumbnail. Right-click the image and choose to copy the image's URL. You can paste the address (ctrl+V) into the address bar and view it even when logged out. You can also embed the image so it appears on other websites.

Oh, and here's a little 'Easter egg' - delete everything up to any forward slash in the image's URL, and you get this guy wearing a "Little Celtics Fan" bib. Now what's all that about?

Bono and bikinis - another privacy warning

Cheeky pictures of U2 lead singer Bono and several bikini-clad babes made their way around Facebook after one of the girls made all the photos available to everyone in her network. What was her 'network'? Oh, only one of the biggest cities on the entire planet... New York! That's why we don't recommend being in a Facebook network at all. When you join a network, Facebook changes your settings by default so that people in that network have access to your profile. Dip into the privacy settings to make sure only your friends can see the information you're disclosing on your profile.

Facebook photo privacy settings

Strangers are just friends you haven't met (but who've met you).

Facebook photos are all the rage. Practically every day, I see someone who's posted a photo of themselves or their friends. And when I go out with my camera, my friends are always scared I'll post a picture of them on Facebook. This does happen, but I'll always honor takedown requests.

What happens when you post a photo on Facebook is that you can choose to have the photo visible by either:

• Friends (say you have 100 friends, then all 100 friends can see your album)
  
• Friends of friends (if your 100 friends have 90 friends each, then 9,000 people could potentially see your album)
  
• Everyone on Facebook (if your profile is public to your network, say, then anyone in that network can click through to your profile and your albums)
  

Click 'Customize' and you will also be able to specify further restrictions including:

• Some Friends (if you only have a couple of people you want to see your photos)
• Except these people (if you want everyone except your boss to see your photos)

Example: If you tag your friend Jim in a photograph and you've allowed Friends of Friends to see it, then when Jim's friend Pete gets a notification that Jim's been tagged in a photo, Pete can click through to the photo Jim's been tagged in.

But that's not all! Pete can now browse through your entire album even if Jim isn't in any more photos. In the past week I've seen plenty of albums belonging to people I don't know. Random babies, honeymoons to Uluru in Australia, Singaporean weddings, decadent parties with 19 year old girls posing seductively to the camera... and so on. And I have no idea who these people are.

So when you create your album you need to think of the parameters you're applying to the entire album, not the individual photos. Flickr allows you to edit privacy settings for each photo, but for Facebook you need to do it for each album.