Wolfgang & Family on Flickr

by Volker Weber

Wolfgang took the plunge and uploaded a bunch of pictures on Flickr. It's good to see you there. We miss you!

Comments

Thanks for the tip with Flickr. So far I can only say: a great tool!

Wolfgang, 2004-10-01

I'v checked it too, it's nice but doesn't suits me. I miss the possibility to create "user accounts" for making albums available for certain users only. I know that I can use the "groups" family and friends, but these users have to be flickr users, too. And I cannot force every of my friends and family members to become flickr users...

It would be enough to set a password for selected albums, but I didn't find this feature :-(

Julian Buss, 2004-10-01

Where is the difference? A basic Flickr account is free. So it basically IS a name and a password. Your friends don't have to upload pictures.

If that is too much, then create ONE virtual friend and give your friends and family his username and password.

Volker Weber, 2004-10-01

yes, sure, but I'm limited to max two accounts, one for "family", one for "friends". But I have different "friend" groups with which I do different things. For exmaple with one group I'm at a wedding, I'm celebrating birthday with another group and with a third group I go sailing. And I don't want that every group see all pictures from events of the other groups.

Beside that, flickr is cool an I like it. But without having a flexible password system it's useless for me. I will ask them if they plan to have such system in the near future.

Julian Buss, 2004-10-01

OK, now I understand.

You made the common mistake of mixing up authentication and authorization. You can authenticate as many users as you want (username/password) but you can authorize only two groups (friends or family) besides public.

So what you are asking for is not a flexible password system (that would be authentication) put a flexible authorization system. When you thinking of protecting a set of pictures with a common password to all users accessing the set, then you have created an unsecure security system. I call this theater security. It only looks secure but it isn't. :-)

Volker Weber, 2004-10-01

sure you're right, that means flickr should have the possiblity to restrict access to a set of pictures to certain users, not only family and friends.
I've told flickr support to read this conversation and asked if they plan to implement this.

Julian Buss, 2004-10-01

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