Social Printing and How to Block Them

Did you know that Facebook allows people to print your photos from online merchants like Target, Walmart, Shutterfly, etc? It’s true. Let’s say you upload a photo and tag your clients or friends in the image. Now that they’ve been tagged, they can go to the application and see albums that they’ve been tagged in. In just a few clicks, they can have your image sent for printing and have it delivered to their door in a matter of days.

So what can you do? Just visit the pages and make sure that you “Block” these applications from being used. I know that it’s fun for people to see your photos with people they might know tagged on them but you also need to make sure that your images aren’t being printed just on someone else’ whim.

You can also upload smaller images but then you run into the problem of wanting to show larger photos so more detail is shown. I think at the end of the day, it’ll be all up to you as the photographer/owner of the image. I think we just need to come to the conclusion that by uploading an image online, you accept the potential pitfalls of doing so. So here’s the list so far (that I know).

• Walgreens
• Shutterfly
• Target
• Snapfish
• Kodak

Anything else? Feel free to add to the list. Thanks!