Millions of people send photos via email on a regular basis. Emailing photos is a fun way to share up-to-the-minute activities that you and your friends have shared. Plus, it is often easier to share photos through email than to upload photos to your photo album online.
There are, however, three things that all email photo sharers should know about before they send photos via email. These three things are designed to keep your photos private and your identity safe:
Be Aware of the Power of the Internet
Someone once said that anything you send through an email could potentially wind up on the front page of the paper. When you send a photo through email, you never know who your recipient might be sharing your photo with. With just a few clicks of the mouse, your photo could be off to another friend and could circulate from that friend to even more people.
Therefore, it's not that you need to be suspicious of your friends every time you send them photos through the Internet, but you should be aware that photo sharing through email could potentially result in your images being sent to more people than you intended.
Filters
If you are sending a photo to a friend at work, be aware that your friends' place of work may have an email filter that removes or screens attachments. This means that, in most cases, your photo could be removed from the email and not actually reach your friend.
However, in some cases, companies actually have a system in place where they essentially spy on their employees by monitoring their email accounts. Therefore, there is the possibility that if you send photos to your friend at work, they could be viewed by others within the workplace or IT department as well.
It is always a good idea to avoid sending incriminating, embarrassing, or racy photos to friends at work.
Exposure
If you send a photo to a friend that is absolutely hilarious and tell your friend to forward the photo along, chances are good that your friend will forward the photo along without removing your email address from the chain. Therefore, your email address and identify would probably go along with the photo.
In many cases, email chains circulate through hundreds and thousands of people. Your email address could potentially be made available to hundreds of thousands of people through this simple photo sharing method.
This is not to say that every photo that you send will become a sure-fire email chain. However, you never know if that truly funny photo you took or found will end up being the topic of discussion at the water cooler tomorrow. Thus, be prepared for the potentially consequences of photo sharing through email.
