[Jedd]

I think complaining about changes being made to a free service is a losing battle, but I'll go along with you a bit longer.

It sounded sarcastic when you said:

  So, leaving my account alone for 3 months = losing most of my photos forever.

  Great.

  Just the service I want to pay for.

But if you were actually paying them, this wouldn't be a problem.

And no, I don't quite understand your recent claim that you were paying them with your data - that's not paying, and clearly your expectations were not aligned with the actual contract (or absence of same) that you had/have with the company.

You've since stated you have all your photos since 2003 backed up, but you claimed originally that this change of policy for non-paying users would see you 'losing most of my photos forever'. So, which is it?

If it's just 'sets of photos that you've selected to share with people' then that doesn't really mesh with your earlier complaints.

Your other complaint - that you haven't received an email they haven't sent yet - is disingenuous. The announcement was made on their web site, and (I'm sure) emails will follow. Mail-outs are typically staggered over many hours, perhaps days - but you typically want the web announcement available first. In the unlikely event you don't get an email in the next couple of days (though it sounds like you don't read that email account either, and haven't in your ten years of using this service thought to change your account's contact email address) then I'll concede this point.

[romwell]

>and haven't in your ten years of using this service thought to change your account's contact email address

OK, I really need to ask: are you a Flickr user?

When Yahoo! bought Flickr and forced everyone to use a Yahoo! login, it became extremely inconvenient not to tie your Flickr account to your Yahoo account if you have one, and I do. Logging in to Yahoo! mail would automatically log you in to Flickr (still does!).

Furthermore, if you have several accounts, you can't get notifications from all of them on an email that's used for logging into one of them.

You just can't. You get an "email associated with another account" error.

It so happens that I use my primary email as a login for a Flickr! account that I use for live music photography only (and, by the way, no notifications there either!) -- but that account has <1000 photos, so it won't be affected.

The whole use-email-as-login policy that Yahoo! instilled on users is a clusterfuck, but that's what it's been, and simply setting a contact email on the account requires jumping through some hoops. (..I am very glad that Flickr will finally move away from that).

So I have to ask: are you a Flickr user, or are you just arguing hypothetically on behalf of SmugMug?

Anyway. My main point was that I see nothing wrong with holding data for ransom, but deleting it without recovery options on a short notice is a very, very bad move. And three months for me is a very short notice in the context of my 10+ years of using the service.

[Jedd]

I have a yahoo account or two, and I think I have a flickr account somewhere ... but as a general rule I don't / wouldn't keep a sole copy of data that I care about on a free-hosting system that I know can't contact me.

[romwell]

>and I think I have a flickr account somewhere

Thank you.

So, you are not an active user of the platform we are discussing here, you are not affected by the update, and you don't know what it is that I'm talking about except for in general terms.

In light of that, stating your opinion on whether I can call myself a devoted user, and comment on what I should or should not expect from the service that you are not using seems.. mysterious?

And I didn't even get into a fraction of features and data that Flickr stores with photos (comments, photos being part of a set, etc -- Flickr is a social network, after all) that are hard or nearly impossible to back up. We are not discussing the merits of backups here, but let's not pretend that users who back up their files meticulously will not be adversely affected if they don't pay up within 3 months.

[Jedd]

You make it sound like I've never seen people on the internet whinge about how something they weren't paying for is changing their T&C's and the person who isn't paying for the service is very upset by this because ... reasons.

I think I can question your devotion to a service by how much you're willing to pay to use it (and how much you complain about it).

You appear to be complaining about having to stump up ~ USD$2 / month to continue to enjoy the same carefree usage you've managed to obtain for free for the last decade.

[Jedd]

Aha - I see you redacted your complaint about a personal email not arriving after onethumb responded in another thread saying much the same that I did (email takes time to send / propagate).