As the following excerpt From Newsline International, a very interesting article about Photo Storage sites. it’s important to read and understand all the implications of storing photos on-line. backing up to CDs, in our opinion, is still the best way to archive your photographs.

Originally found in the Wall Street Journal, this was extracted from the full page because we thought it might be of great interest to our readers (the full page can be found here):

The downside of photo storage sites
Consumers using photo storage websites need to read the fine print so they are able to retrieve their photos when needed.

A Wall Street Journal article today talks about how online photo-storage sites have proliferated in recent years, many offering “free” and “unlimited” photo archiving, but the sites are making money in other ways, and some users may not realize their photos are at risk.

Many sites are requiring users to purchase products, charging other fees, or setting conditions to ensure that customers gaze at ads. If users don’t follow the conditions for service — often disclosed only in the fine print — their photographs could wind up getting deleted, says the article.

Eastman Kodak Co. Chairman Antonio Perez signaled the industry’s posture toward free storage when he told an investors conference on Monday that Kodak EasyShare Gallery last year quietly added an option in which consumers can pay $2.49 a month for storage if they want to avoid a rule that mandates an annual purchase from the site. “Consumers have the attitude that everything should be free,” he said, indicating that was unreasonable.

In another tack geared to bringing in advertising dollars, Time Warner’s AOL in December converted its “you’ve-got-pictures” service for AOL members into AOL Pictures, a Web-based service that is free and open to all, but requires users to sign in periodically. AOL has the right to “deactivate” the account anytime a user fails to log in for 90 days. After that, the pictures could be erased.

AOL Pictures and Kodak EasyShare Gallery (formerly Ofoto) aren’t unusual in setting conditions on using their photo archives, says The Wall Street Journal. Despite come-ons offering “free storage,” some sites require viewing pictures as often as every 60 days; others require users to pay to print out at least one picture every year, or buy some other product, like a coffee mug, calendar, or boxer shorts with photos on them. Consumers who register on the sites often complain that the conditions on these websites are often poorly disclosed.

Ronald P. Bailey, a Tobyhanna, Pa., USA, real estate investor, found out about some rules the hard way in November, when he tried and failed to retrieve pictures from Snapfish, a unit of Hewlett-Packard Co. that offers free storage. When he e-mailed the company, he was told that his photos had been removed because there hadn’t been any orders placed from his account for over a year, he recalls in the article. “I told my wife, and she was on the verge of tears,” he says. “My children were in shock.”

Snapfish had sent Bailey two e-mail warnings, but he says he gets so many e-mails with special offers from Snapfish that he automatically routes them to junk mail. “For something as important as my photos, they should have a stamp to mail me a letter,” he says. After an e-mail exchange, Snapfish was able to restore his photos. Bailey has bought two 12-by-18-inch poster prints of his family; he plans to hang one in his family room as a reminder to order something new from Snapfish every year.

Disclosure of the rules isn’t obvious on Snapfish’s website, which says: “We enable our members to share, print and store their most important photo memories…” Only by clicking a button labeled “T&C’s” at the bottom of the page does a user come to the terms and conditions page. There, in a detailed, fine-print section, a reader finds that: “A condition of Membership is your ‘Active Participation,’ ” which is defined as buying something every 365 days.

Paul Schumer, vice president of marketing for Snapfish, says: “we try to be as lenient as possible,” but “given the costs,” of storing digital images, Snapfish needs to see an action by consumers to show they are still interested in using the site. He says the requirement “never becomes an issue for the vast majority of people” who post pictures because they visit frequently and buy prints or merchandise.

Similarly, at Kodak Gallery, users must click the “Terms” button at the bottom of the home page and read down to item 17 to discover that photos may be erased if a member doesn’t buy something every 12 months — or pay the $2.49-a-month storage charge.

Many services sell ads that appear above or beside the photos they display, giving them a financial stake in having people view photos as often as possible. “We have an advertising model,” says Martin Green, senior vice president of CNET Networks’ WebShots.com service: “If you want to store for free, you need to use the product.”

WebShots used to delete photo albums if they weren’t viewed every six months, but after being questioned for this article, Green said WebShots decided to extend the limit to a year.

Other services have tighter time limits. Mystic Color Labs, a unit of Maryland-based District Photo Inc., boasts of “free unlimited photo storage” on the front page of its website. But if you click on “terms” at the bottom of the page, you find that digital pictures are removed after just 60 days. Neil Cohen, president of District Photo, says the site allows users to upload an unlimited number of photos, but he says the site is being changed to make it clear that Mystic’s business is printing and that it doesn’t provide long-term archiving. He says he doesn’t know of any customer complaints about deleted photos. “Before any image is whacked, they get three or four notices,” he says.

Other companies simply get their revenue from fees, says the article. Phanfare.com, a Metuchen, N.J., paid-storage site, last month added a $300 “lifetime” membership to its $55-a-year or $7-a-month options.

With many sites, there is another risk for consumers: Companies who don’t consider storage a core business could later completely discontinue the service. Indeed, a number of companies have abandoned the business, including Microsoft Corp., Canon Inc., and Adobe Systems Inc., says the article.

To ensure that pictures don’t vanish unexpectedly, almost all the services advise customers to keep their own back-ups on CDs or DVDs, says the article. A photographer who has pictures stored on a computer hard drive, a back-up disk, and a paid online service that bills his credit card regularly has a high likelihood of being able to recover from any disaster. And, it pays to read the fine print.