…and other cloud programs, I should add. Although I have written a couple of blogs on this, recent activity by Shutterfly brought renewed focus to my point.
Shutterfly is an online program that was very popular….until….
The TODAY show did a news feature titled “Protecting Your Precious Photo Archives” on April 21, 2023. TODAY’s announcer stated that Shutterfly, the printing and archiving site that has been around for nearly 25 years, is trying to win back its customers after a recent change to its free, unlimited photo storage that made some users “shutter”.
Here’s the link- it is only a 3 minute video but the stories told by users are poignant. Click HERE
As the lady in tears who lost 2 decades of photos says, “it feels like a death because everything is on there”. She explains she had 2 decades of photos in the storage and missed the notifications. Shutterfly says they emailed everyone of their shutting down the storage site. The date passed and her photos were gone.
Evidently, she was only one of many in this predicament. On social media, users called the shut-down “heartless” and another said “after 18 years of using Shutterfly to store all my precious memories, I just found out that ALL of my pictures have been PERMANENTLY DELETED from the App. I feel like I just had a house fire and lost everything that mattered to me, my photos! I cannot stop crying! I had pictures of my family members who have passed away, my son’s first trip to Disney, his birthdays, and so many other unforgettable moments…” and on it went.
The word got out, was damaging to Shutterfly and eventually brought them to relent. They opened up access again until May 30. It was not clear, but it appears the investigation by the TODAY show was part of the turning around of the company to allow this access for a short time.
Of course, I wondered how many people are still “unaware” of the disappearing of their decades of photos. And how many had trusted the online storage so that they don’t have any other system or backup. And how many users have now left this earth and their loved ones have no idea where the family photos were or went – of course, they would never get the email notice even if they knew the family member used Shutterfly.
Equally as sad to me were the three “remedies” offered in the TODAY piece – oh, dear! I just have to comment:
**Invest in an External Drive – oh, please, hear me out on this as it is the same as hanging on to old computers and camera cards which have photos on them. Some external drives offer warranties lasting between 3-5 years. Leads you to wonder what the failure rate is. Evidently, there are no definitive studies but Backblaze did a comparison in over 25,000 hard drives. They found that over a 6-year period, 65% of the drives were still operational. But they concluded that as the hard drive ages past 4 years, the failure rate increased tremendously. However, if it was only 1% and it was YOUR external drive, how would you feel?
**2nd suggestion – Subscribe to more than one cloud service – Really? They offered Amazon or Google as examples – wait! Did you learn nothing from this Shutterfly experience? Check their policies – when the subscription or their terms (buy something every 1.5 years, etc.) occur, or when they go out of existence, you are “up a creek” again. Plus you have to move all the photos again. Even if you have 2 or more backup services, it’s a lot of managerial work – ready for that?
**Last suggestion –Make unique passwords for your photo accounts – sorry, this last recommendation of theirs left me with a puzzled brain. What good does this do if you are locked out of your storage account for lack of purchasing on their timeline, or paying a subscription or just because they no longer are going to store photos (like Costco which shut down photo service Jan. 31, 2023).
Okay, okay! I have written about this before – so I will share the blog locations for more detail, but let me summarize the LESSON!
In my blog “What Happens to My Photos When…” (click HERE) I outline the problems answering the “when” question – floods, tornados, fires, disasters of all kinds, theft, change computers, EXHD fails, device runs out of storage, die without others knowing where photos are, etc.
I shared in that blog my history of being the family photo-taker and historian and searching for safe, reliable storage places – and yes, the fact that the 200,000+ photos in my photo storage software on my computer (if they even could find it) along with the 8 huge boxes of genealogical research papers (oh-so unorganized) would send my survivors screaming out the door.
The “end” of my journey of searching for the right tools and methods was the discovery of a one-stop shopping resource called FOREVER. And I shared my “why”. For the sake of brevity, I will bullet-point these for you here and encourage you to look at the blog for details.
- FOREVER is the only place I know where you “own” your cloud storage, not just “rent” it – that means no data mining, total privacy, and it has the FOREVER guarantee
- A funded system makes their guarantee happen as soon as you purchase it – they guarantee your items (photos, audio, video, items scanned online) will be preserved, protected and available for your lifetime plus 100 years. It is a triple backed-up system which automatically changes formats–hallelujah.
- A system of curating allows appointment of one or more Account Managers right here and now (before I leave earth). I can designate which items are private or shared with friends and family. And FOREVER’s amazing support people will assist the Account Managers with everything they need.
- Not “everything” has to go into my permanent FOREVER storage – just what I choose and would be of value or interest to those who come after me. I only pay to store those items. I use another FOREVER program for the items I want to last only during my lifetime (called “Historian”).
- It is easy to send my photos to FOREVER via phone, online transfer or even using their digitizing services (for my past physical albums, old photos, large items)
- There is a great “organizing” system of albums (like folders) with sub-albums plus tagging which makes it easy to retrieve photos/audios/videos. Plus these are mine to access and share as I like – and no, there is no charge for downloading or accessing them. I “own” the storage and the items in it and can train my Account Managers in how to share the items during my lifetime and afterwards.
The other blog is titled “Surprise Surprise Surprise” and covers Google and Costco photo storage plus my FOREVER solution. Click HERE
So, enough from me – check it out yourself. Click HERE and search the information under “Preserve & Share”. I never knew this was available until a few years ago and I am so glad I found this feature of FOREVER. It has given me great peace of mind!
(Did I mention that while on my FOREVER site, you can sign up for a free account and play around with it a bit – you get 2 GB of storage to play with and there is no requirement for any purchase tied to it – check it out and take some time to think about your own plan of action)
