Be Careful if you use Flickr - SCARY!

This happened to professional Photographer friend of mine.
This as posted on Facebook.
I thought it would nice to share here.
BE CAREFUL IF YOU USE FLICKR!


READ THIS: So, many of you know my Flickr account was recently SHUT DOWN after being a paying member for over 3 years and amassing literally millions of photo views and thousands of contacts. I sent a number of emails to them trying to find out the cause for the disable and this was their first response:

"Don't upload anything that isn't yours.
This includes other people's photographs and/or stuff that
you've collected from around the internet. Accounts that
consist primarily of such collections may be terminated."

Your account was brought to our attention through Report
Abuse. Upon review, we determined that your content and/or
behavior was in violation and your account was terminated.

Thank you again for contacting us. If you have any other
questions, please feel free to reply to this email.

Of course I sent a scathing email back to them saying every single photo on my stream was shot and edited by me, and that I wasn't accepting this reply. Yesterday, I received a reply from a senior person at Flickr:

Hi there,

I would like to apologize. It seems a mistake was made by
one of our agents who mistakenly believed the content in
your account was not your own. Flickr has strict policies
about uploading content that isn't your own and our agent
believed he was acting correctly.

I have spoken to the agent directly and explained the
situation. His supervisor is also aware of this.

Unfortunately, we do not have a way to bring back your
content. I have given your new account a year of
free pro as some sort of compensation even though I know you
would probably prefer that we could restore your content.

I have done all I can to ensure something like this doesn't
happen again, and I can only apologize for this mistake
happening in the first place.

Thank you for your understanding,
Cathryn
Senior Flickr staff

WTF!!? 1 Year? Thats it? for just throwing away 3 years of hard work for nothing? What to do, what to do...

How could that "MUPPET" have determined it was'nt your friends work if he did'nt contact your friend with proof.I take it your friend has his originals still.

I'm sure your friend has the originals on your hard drive right.

No notice from the MUPPET's before they deleted everything?

That is crap, you lose all the comments too. If this is part of your business and marketing I would sue them.

USER876 wrote in post #11731726
That is crap, you lose all the comments too. If this is part of your business and marketing I would sue them.

Um. Flickr clearly states in the terms of service that Flickr is not to be used for commercial purposes.

Then why is Getty making money of images?

chrisvl wrote in post #11731835
Then why is Getty making money of images?

Because they found a ready supply of dupes who are willing to sell themselves well short for a few pennies...

Even if it isn't a business thing, when they delete the account it is deleted. Comments are gone, favorites are gone, everything. As I recall, even your contacts are gone.

USER876 wrote in post #11731726
That is crap, you lose all the comments too. If this is part of your business and marketing I would sue them.

are comments important to you?

Doesn't sound like the same person, but if it is:

http://thomashawk.com …r-your-understanding.html

krb wrote in post #11731878
Even if it isn't a business thing, when they delete the account it is deleted. Comments are gone, favorites are gone, everything. As I recall, even your contacts are gone.

Thats not the case when a pro account is not paid. They revert the account to the free account and many/most of your images are no longer there, but when you pay up, it comes back. I find it hard to believe that Flickr does not have backups.

Quizzical_Squirrel wrote in post #11731956
I am rather sceptical about this story but how awful if it's true.

Same here, sound too draconian to me.

gjl711 wrote in post #11732040
Thats not the case when a pro account is not paid. They revert the account to the free account and many/most of your images are no longer there, but when you pay up, it comes back. I find it hard to believe that Flickr does not have backups.

But this wasn't a failure to renew a pro account, this is apparently an account being completely deleted because of a supposed violation.

still skeptical after reading Village_idot's post.
Guess my friend wasn't the only one.

And no it's not the same person. Although I notice the same person from Flickr responded to him.

And people read the post carefully. Flickr admitted is was their mistake. So why be skeptical.

Crazy that they would just delete the account the photos and all the information without any sort of review process, seems very strange and pretty dumb if this is their usual practice.