Long-lost—or simply long forgotten—photos are popping up on Google+ without some users knowing it. If you're at all concerned about the privacy of your images, you'd better double-check whatever you've uploaded to Picasa and Blogger, as the sister sites are showing off images they host directly in Google+, making it easier for people to find them.I was tipped off to this image privacy issue a few days ago when I received a Google+ notification that my sister had tagged herself in one of my photos. "One of my photos?" I thought. "But I haven't uploaded anything to Google+ yet!"
What she had found, by looking under the "Photos" link associated with my profile," were pictures of us traveling together... in 2008. Three years ago, I had uploaded the photos to Picasa, made them public, and sent the link to my family. I rarely use Picasa (if I recall, I used it on this occasion because I maxed out my free Flickr space), so I forgot to take the images down later or mark them private. Either way, I was never too worried that business associates or loose acquaintances would come across the pictures, as they'd have to search pretty hard to find them.
But now, all those photos are in Google+, easy enough to find from the "Photos" link on my profile page.
Who Can See What?
After all that talk about how easy it is to create Circles (even though some disagree), see who's in a Circle, and share content with only specific people, it's surprisingly much more difficult to figure out who can see your images and albums. More
