If you're a Flickr user, you may want to dig through that bulk inbox for an important heads-up from the photo sharing site. Reports have emerged that between Jan. 18 and Feb. 7, a portion of Flickr users' private photos were made public due to a software bug discovered during routine maintenance. While the photos wouldn't have shown up in a search, they were visible on affected users' photo streams during that time. 

Scope Of The Breach Remains Unclear

Rather than reporting this on its company-wide blog, Flickr opted to selectively notify individuals affected by the mishap. The company has only admitted that the issue impacted a "small percentage of photos," so the scope of the privacy breach remains unclear for the time being. For compromised accounts, the bug only exposed photos uploaded between April and December 2012. 

To mitigate further damage, Flickr locked down affected users' photos with additional privacy settings, requiring some users to manually re-adjust the privacy settings on their entire Flickr photo collections - no small task for a longtime user.

Between a slick new iPhone app and a lot of Instagram malaise, Flickr got a major shot in the arm late last year. We don't yet know how many users were affected, but it's certainly triggered a wave of negative sentiment for the Yahoo-owned photo site.

If you had any relatively naughty Flickr activity last year, now's the time to go through your privacy settings with a fine-toothed comb.

The holidays may have come early for Yahoo this year... assuming that the company is paying attention.

Just last week I noted that if Facebook makes a misstep with its biggest acquisition to date, Yahoo's Flickr photo-sharing service is perfectly positioned to welcome a mass exodus of Instagram users. That seems to be happening right now as an update to Instagram's Terms of Service has many Instagrammers up in arms.

See Jon Mitchell's Why I Quit Instagram And Am Moving To Flickr

See John Paul Titlow's Facebook Poisons Instagram For Its Most Valuable Users: Real Photographers

The text of the update, which appeared at the top of my Instagram feed on Monday, is available in full on Instagram's blog. Want the Cliff's Notes? Facebook will be pumping ads into Instagram and your photos are fair game:

"Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you. If you are under the age of eighteen (18), or under any other applicable age of majority, you represent that at least one of your parents or legal guardians has also agreed to this provision (and the use of your name, likeness, username, and/or photos (along with any associated metadata)) on your behalf."

The new Instagram terms go into effect January 16th. 

So what's the problem? People don't trust Facebook. In spite of inching toward transparency, the social network is so big (and so slippery, historically) that many members are suspicious of its motives. When Facebook bought Instagram last spring, the consensus was that the deal was an expensive way to neuter an emergent threat. But the boost to Facebook's Like-worthiness could have been just as valuable, assuming the social behemoth didn't fumble its biggest acquisition. 

Enter Instagram, an extremely well-loved app - especially considering its age. And for a while Facebook treated its shiny new toy with kid gloves. The company swore up and down that the beloved mobile-only service would maintain its autonomy from the world's biggest social network. Facebook tread carefully to avoid upsetting the big new brand under its wing.

Until this week, that is. 

If Facebook breaks Instagram, users won't hate only the implementation of ads and the monetization of their content without payment; they'll loathe the brand that made their favorite app un-fun. "Ugh, Facebook ruins everything," they'll huff about the new ToS.

Yahoo's Flickr Moment?

Hey, Yahoo... you're writing all of this down, right? It's go-time if you want to take advantage of the newly bubbling discontent with Instagram. But you've got to be pro-active.

Slash Flickr Pro membership prices, blast some sassy remarks across social channels... whatever it takes. You just launched a great mobile update. People want a photo sharing service they can trust - or maybe even just one that isn't bound up in Facebook. Instagram's wave of social photogs might be ready to flee the app for greener, more trustworthy pastures - and they're looking for a pied piper. Now is your chance to make sure Flickr is that place.

Ready to make the jump yourself? Services like Instaport and OpenPhoto let you download your Instagram photos in one fell swoop so you can batch upload them to Flickr. Godpseed!

I never thought I'd do this, but I quit Instagram yesterday.

It wasn't Instagram's new terms of service and privacy policy, though those are terrible. I don't relish the idea of my friends' faces and data being sold for advertising, but it happens all the time already. No, if I rage-quit social networks for reasons like that, I'd have been offline since they let high school kids onto Facebook. I live my life online as though I'm freely making stuff for other people to sell. It's fun. Who cares?

Of course, I do it with the explicit knowledge that I'm doing so. I don't post things I don't want to be publicly available. People who don't realize what's going on are screwed. So don't get me wrong, I am utterly disappointed in the businesses chosen by the dominant Web companies.

But I quit Instagram for another reason. It's going to sound pretentious, but I really don't mean it that way. I grew out of it.

Out Of The Box

I didn't take photos before I had a smartphone, and I wasn't a photographer before I got Instagram. I didn't know where to look, how to frame, or where to gather the light. I was incapable of using a camera.

But through the amazingly simple mechanisms of Instagram, I was able to get software assistance for my shots and human feedback on my choices. Instagram taught me everything. It taught me to care about photos.

And now I do care, and I look at these little low-quality, brown-shifted boxes, and they look so much more boring than the wild visions in my mind.

Add on to that the fact that any free social network will eventually be covered in unsightly ads, and you see why I quit Instagram. It's not inspiring anymore.

As John Paul Titlow just wrote, Instagram will surely survive these changes, but it might be worse off for it. Avid photographers are not feeling it anymore.

The Social Network

I went to Flickr. I'd never used it before. Like I said, I never really took a photo until Instagram came along, and many people trace the downfall of Flickr to precisely that moment.

But Facebook played the other part in that. That was the social shoebox for photos when I got started. Flickr was still around, but when Facebook added photos, my start-up cost fell to zero. Facebook was the first social Web product I ever really used. It was a generational thing.

So when Instagram sold to Facebook, I was thrilled. It seemed like such a natural combination. I'd have a full-featured one-stop shop for sharing my photos with the people in them. Alas, the novelty wore off.

And then Flickr released that new app right before Instagram released that new policy, and I realized what I had to do.

I wanted all my photos on the Web in the highest quality. I wanted to be able to share them or keep them private as needed. I wanted to control the rights around their use. I wanted to be able to take more pictures, upload them, organize them and talk about them while mobile, but I also wanted a full-featured big-screen interface when I was at my computer. And I was happy to pay an established company, Yahoo, to provide the service, so I could be sure it would keep working.

That's why, along with dozens of people in my networks, I joined Flickr yesterday, and we found tons of old friends there waiting, happy to see us.

Lead image via Flickr Commons.