My friend Mike Monteiro is one of the more active Flickr users I know. He's always doing something interesting there, and has been a big promoter of it for as long as I can recall. Yet yesterday, he received a threatening letter from Flickr based on unspecified actions on his part:
Use it, but don't depend on it. Really, I don't understand how trusting people are in complete strangers who they haven't even spoken to directly -- like, say, Flickr. Flickr and all the other sites are useful, of course, and quite handy for general usage, but I can't stress this enough: if it is very, very, very important to you -- say, if it's the only existing photo of your beloved deceased grandma or that precious moment when your son blew out his first birthday cake -- do not, do not, do not scan it to an internet uploading surface and then burn the original copy thinking you'll take a tiny bit of the burden off Gaia that way. Always store PHYSICAL backups of everything important to you. That means dead tree copies, in a safety deposit box or under your mattress or buy a portable safe (I have one for my important papers). Because you can't trust entirely in the world/future/humanity. And there is nothing wrong with that. It's called being careful.
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