The Private Parts.

Pictures play a large part in making the Internet what it is: a visual spectrum with images of all kinds for anyone to enjoy. Every search engine has a feature that can explore postings on the Web for anything uploaded by online users. Results are neatly displayed, with links to their original pages, and the experience is becoming easier with every day that passes.

An issue that's existed with every aspect of the Internet, however, is that of security/privacy. High-profile brands run the risk of being impersonated without knowing. Big money-earning companies may be hacked, as well, just as Bank of America has in the past. Social sites like Facebook often come under fire for the accessibility of content posted by users. What about image sharing sites like Flickr?

Flickr Bug Exposes Private Photos

Recently the photo-sharing site had some issues regarding users' private pictures not actually being private. While not every user was wronged by this bug, those that were received an oddly frustrating treatment as reparations. Every public photo submitted by affected users was turned private, regardless of how the user wanted them to be.

On one hand, users are highly inconvenienced (albeit for a short time) by having to go out and select specific pictures to be set to a specific privacy setting. The service is free, but so are other social sites. Messing up with privacy settings is an easy way to lose a lot of traffic, but messing up the cleanup process afterward is an easy way to garner some poor ratings from lost consumers. You don't really see Facebook or Twitter doing much besides temporarily going out of service, leaving everyone inconvenienced at once, instead of temporarily dropping the ball for a select few.

On the other hand, this type of reaction can be attributed to how this generation of Internet users is. Everything needs to be free and as quick or convenient as possible. Some third party may just need to step in and remind everyone involved that they should try providing a better service if they'd like to complain about it.

Flickr doesn't necessarily need to worry about losing all the traffic on its site; with platforms like Instagram gaining in popularity, it's getting easier than ever to upload pictures in a more social manner. However, with more people flocking to online photo services, it would do nothing but help them if they could learn from their mistakes with this most recent bug and provide better service to their current users.