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June 14, 2006

There Are No Private Albums In Picasa

If you create albums with Picasa Web Albums, you must know that your album's URL will be accessible to everyone. If you don't make the album public, it will not be listed in your gallery, but can be accessed if someone guesses the URL.

"What's the difference between public albums and those that are unlisted?

When you upload photos to Picasa Web Albums, you can mark your albums as public or unlisted.

* Public albums appear on your "My Photos" and "My Public Gallery" pages. These albums can be viewed by anyone who knows the URL for your public gallery. This URL is easy to share – it's short and based on your Gmail username: http://picasaweb.google.com/GmailUsername
* Unlisted albums do not appear in your public gallery; only you can see them on your My Photos page. Since they don't appear publicly, they're accessible much like an unlisted phone number – anyone who knows the specific URL of an album can view its contents, but there's no directory for finding them."
(From Picasa Web Albums FAQ)

Philipp Lenssen even found an album of Larry Page that's not accessible from his public gallery.

8 comments:

  1. does this go for Google Calendar too?
    I mean if someone guesses my Calendar url can they view it?

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  2. there should be a private album in picassa web album!everybody should have the right to have some privacy!like me most people wouldn't like strangers viewing their photos!i am opting out from uploading pictures in picassa for safety and security1wouldn't want paedophile flicking through it!can't take the risk on purpose!

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  3. I think is terrible that we can't have any privacy in our web albums!! i want to share my photos with my family not with strangers! I'd like to have a private web photo gallery, so all my familly can have acces to my photos in the same adress, but not other people!. Photos is something very personal and private.

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  4. I travel a lot and take oddles of photos. I do not care who sees them. if they had gone to these places they would have seen whatever I took photos of. a few photos of the people I'm with. but mostly the animals. birds. Mt. and oceans etc etc. so share with anyone.

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  5. How do you guess the URL? what are the tricks fro doing that?

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  6. Wow. Didn't know this. I uploaded an inventory of some household goods that I do not want public. It would be very easy to figure out my URL. I will now have to move these photos off Picasa. What a pain, plus I spent a lot of time getting that album set up, adding comments, etc! Definitely should have a completely private option, not just an 'unlisted' option. I won't use Picasa until this is fixed.

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  7. The article is from 2006: a lot of things has been changed since then. You can now make your albums private.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The images however are not protected... Only the wrapper page for the image.

    ReplyDelete

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