Remind HN: Your Flickr Favourites Are (Still) Public and Searchable

2 points

13 years ago

A lot of you probably haven’t used Flickr in ages like I, and maybe Flickr or you have changed since then.

In late 2011[^1] (pre-Mayer), Yahoo! allowed users to search in the favourite collections of each other. Here is a basic query for mature content for your own profile to see what people might come across in your collection of favourites:

    http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=faves&q=sex+or+boobs+or+butt+or+porn [^2]

To search within another user’s favourites, retrieve their user ID from idGettr[^3], and paste it in a query like this:

    http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=faves-[[ ID ]]&q=sex+or+boobs+or+butt+or+porn [^4]

I didn’t know this, and I imagine it happened while I wasn’t using the service. Add to this that you cannot opt out of this.

I have been in touch with Yahoo![^5], and to summarize their response, public, searchable favourites with no opt-outs are here to stay. To each their own, and I am definitely a bit on the nutty side when it comes to privacy—I just can’t bring myself to ever have a Facebook account, but I totally understand people feel differently about these things. I’m sure other privacy fanatics on HN who check their privacy settings meticulously were as unaware of at least some this.

Some things have changed since the last time I and you used Flickr, and many of them are here to stay, so in the spirit of Steve Jobs’s choice words on privacy, at you at least now should have a good idea of what you’re signing up for.

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