Private Galleries & Keyword Search

gumsmug

Hi All,

I have been evaluating some of the available online photo storage and organization software, and so far I have narrowed down to SmugMug for my use. I tried Flickr and Zooomr as well, among some others. My primary use is for organizing my pictures as well as allowing my family/friends to view them without login/passwords etc. Smugmug meets those criteria pretty well.

I have read thru the numerous posts regards the issue of forgoing search functionatliy with private galleries. The keyword search functionality is an important factor for me so I was trying to find a way of getting search with private galleries. One way that seems to work is this.
- Create private galleries but assign keywords as needed.
- When you want to search your galleries for specific keywords, convert all your galleries to public. There is a nice bulk setting feature in the control panel that aids in this process.
- After the search (and any processing based on the results) is complete, convert all your galleries back to private.

This allows me to search my pictures as well as keep my galleries private. But the question I have for the privacy advocates is this - Is there any hole in this mechanism ? Does making my galleries public for a short time period cause any issues related to search bots and crawlers ? Is this mechanism safe enough that I can follow it as needed for my photo organization ?

I appreciate your thoughts on this idea.

Rando

If your galleries gets indexed while public and then you flip it to private, it will still show up in the search results and will still be accessable via the indexed link. I also have galleries the were once public that got indexed that have now been privated/password protected that are still showing up in the search results. These were all indexed both under my custom domain and my smugmug username.

Ultimately I've changed the CNAME for my custom domain so at the very least the links in the search results go nowhere. Next step is I'm going to have to change my smugmug username so those links go nowhere also.

Your best bet for not getting your galleries indexed is to never make them public. Ultimately any pics you don't want getting indexed, don't put them on smugmug there are too many holes.

In starting up my on the side photo business, I (vainly) used my real name for the domain. In combination of that for the custom domain and having all my galleries public, both the business photos and my family photos got indexed. Photography is not my day job, and if I ever change jobs I'd hate to have a potential employer judge me based on family photos that pop up in google. Previously, the only hits to my name were to a couple of newsgroups posting from 1994 when everyone used their real name, real email, shoot even real mailing address. Up until now I've been diligent about keeping my real name off the internet, don't use your real name for domain like I did.

In retrospect I don't think it was a good idea since when you now google my name all that pops up are all my previously public smugmug galleries.

I've got more to say, but I wanted to get this post out before you made your galleries public.

papajay

There's a "Back Door" exposure!

gumsmug wrote:

Hi All,

I have been evaluating some of the available online photo storage and organization software, and so far I have narrowed down to SmugMug for my use. I tried Flickr and Zooomr as well, among some others. My primary use is for organizing my pictures as well as allowing my family/friends to view them without login/passwords etc. Smugmug meets those criteria pretty well.

I have read thru the numerous posts regards the issue of forgoing search functionatliy with private galleries. The keyword search functionality is an important factor for me so I was trying to find a way of getting search with private galleries. One way that seems to work is this.
- Create private galleries but assign keywords as needed.
- When you want to search your galleries for specific keywords, convert all your galleries to public. There is a nice bulk setting feature in the control panel that aids in this process.
- After the search (and any processing based on the results) is complete, convert all your galleries back to private.

This allows me to search my pictures as well as keep my galleries private. But the question I have for the privacy advocates is this - Is there any hole in this mechanism ? Does making my galleries public for a short time period cause any issues related to search bots and crawlers ? Is this mechanism safe enough that I can follow it as needed for my photo organization ?

I appreciate your thoughts on this idea.

I experimented with the same/similar concept some time back, and it works pretty much the way you envision it, as I recall (although converting back and forth between public and private is an annoyance, no matter how "simple" it is achieved). Another annoyance which you were trying to avoid...your friends/family might have some difficulty viewing your galleries when they are all private (unless you provide them with a password).

Somewhere in the annals of the private/public/keyword discussion is the topic of the dreaded Back Door. If you keyword your images, Google can access them...even if they are in private galleries. As I recall, the images will display in the search results...again, even if the gallery is private. You're somewhat protected, though, because selecting/clicking on an image in the search results will take them to a screen that says "Private Gallery" (so they would not be able to access the gallery itself without knowing a password).

I'm sure someone will correct me if any of this is wrong...but that's how I remember it.


Good Luck.

Rando

Another tip, make a separate private gallery for posting pics to dgrin or other forums. Set it to hide owner and then the links will end up looking like http: //www.smugmug.com/photos/xxxxxxx.jpg

dmc

Rando wrote:

.... Up until now I've been diligent about keeping my real name off the internet, don't use your real name for domain like I did.
....

you might want to know that Smugmug's search will bring up your site when you search on your last name.... the last name you used when you created your account... the one on your control panel. Try it from the search box on www.smugmug.com

I discovered this myself a while back.... after being careful not to use my last name anywhere on my site. It doesn't look like Google has access to it though (thank goodness)

Discussed here
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=307475#post307475

Rando

dmc wrote:

you might want to know that Smugmug's search will bring up your site when you search on your last name.... the last name you used when you created your account... the one on your control panel. Try it from the search box on www.smugmug.com

I discovered this myself a while back.... after being careful not to use my last name anywhere on my site. It doesn't look like Google has access to it though (thank goodness)

Discussed here
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=307475#post307475

Dammit

Andy

papajay wrote:

Somewhere in the annals of the private/public/keyword discussion is the topic of the dreaded Back Door. If you keyword your images, Google can access them...even if they are in private galleries.

Papa, I can't replicate this behavior no matter how I try. Please give me links to such galleries on your site, and the corresponding google searches. Use PM if you wish.

Thanks.

dmc

papajay wrote:

I experimented with the same/similar concept some time back, and it works pretty much the way you envision it, as I recall (although converting back and forth between public and private is an annoyance, no matter how "simple" it is achieved). Another annoyance which you were trying to avoid...your friends/family might have some difficulty viewing your galleries when they are all private (unless you provide them with a password).

Somewhere in the annals of the private/public/keyword discussion is the topic of the dreaded Back Door. If you keyword your images, Google can access them...even if they are in private galleries. As I recall, the images will display in the search results...again, even if the gallery is private. You're somewhat protected, though, because selecting/clicking on an image in the search results will take them to a screen that says "Private Gallery" (so they would not be able to access the gallery itself without knowing a password).

I'm sure someone will correct me if any of this is wrong...but that's how I remember it.


Good Luck.

As I understand it, Private galleries (more appropriatlely "Unlisted Galleries") and Passworded galleries are separate concepts. Galleries can either be Public or Private, and they can either have a password or not.

If a gallery was ever public before you made it private, it could have been indexed by Google (like if your phone number was already in the phone book, but then you told them to make it unlisted) Adding a password to either a Public or Private gallery will stop someone from browsing that gallery even if they have the url.

Rando

So it looks like now when someone google searches for my name, even though my smugmug galleries now go to dead links from google, they'll know I have a smugmug account (which I admit is my fault for using my real name for a domain) and then if they do a smugmug search my site will still pop up no matter what I do (change nickname, change name in control panel).

And it looks like my oldnickname.smugmug.com is getting forwarded to my newnickname.smugmug.com when I click on google search results.

papajay

Andy wrote:

Papa, I can't replicate this behavior no matter how I try. Please give me links to such galleries on your site, and the corresponding google searches. Use PM if you wish.

Thanks.

Andy, no matter how hard I try to remember, I just can't seem to find it (the "back door" discussion). I didn't just make it up, but maybe I'm confusing "private" with "password-protected" again (wouldn't be the first time, and probably won't be the last).

I recall there were posts that described at least one scenario whereby access to a smugmug subscriber's photos was possible through a search (google, I thought originally, but maybe it was just a smugmug "keyword" search) even when the subscriber thought he'd succesfully locked everybody out.

It's still a bit confusing to me, even today...there's (at least) 4 WAYs to perform a search using keywords:
1. Enter the keyword in a "google" search box.
2. Enter the keyword in "smugmug" search box at SmugMug main home page.
3. Enter the keyword ("balderdash") in a "smugmug" search box on a SmugMug subscriber's home page.
4. Enter the keyword at the back of a subscriber's smugmug URL address [EMAIL="smugmug_nickname@smugmug.com/keyword/balderdash"]smugmug_nickname@smugmug.com/keyword/balderdash[/EMAIL]

Each of these approaches can produce different "results" as I understand it.
1. Searches the entire web.
2.Searches all smugmug subscribers sites keywords, captions, descriptions.
3. Searches keywords, captions, descriptions, but only on that subscriber's site.
4. Searches just keywords (but not captions, descriptions)

If I misled anyone, it was unintentional.

TheDuck

papajay wrote:

Andy, no matter how hard I try to remember, I just can't seem to find it (the "back door" discussion). I didn't just make it up, but maybe I'm confusing "private" with "password-protected" again (wouldn't be the first time, and probably won't be the last).

I recall there were posts that described at least one scenario whereby access to a smugmug subscriber's photos was possible through a search (google, I thought originally, but maybe it was just a smugmug "keyword" search) even when the subscriber thought he'd succesfully locked everybody out.

It's still a bit confusing to me, even today...there's (at least) 4 WAYs to perform a search using keywords:
1. Enter the keyword in a "google" search box.
2. Enter the keyword in "smugmug" search box at SmugMug main home page.
3. Enter the keyword ("balderdash") in a "smugmug" search box on a SmugMug subscriber's home page.
4. Enter the keyword at the back of a subscriber's smugmug URL address smugmug_nickname@smugmug.com/keyword/balderdash

Each of these approaches can produce different "results" as I understand it.
1. Searches the entire web.
2.Searches all smugmug subscribers sites keywords, captions, descriptions.
3. Searches keywords, captions, descriptions, but only on that subscriber's site.
4. Searches just keywords (but not captions, descriptions)

If I misled anyone, it was unintentional.

I'm sure no one thinks you intentionally mislead folks!....I'm pretty sure that I remember recently reading about this as the "backdoor" that finally got closed ~ mid-last year. Someone brought it back to Andy's attention, Onethumb chimed in as saying "its a bug...a big one...we'll fix it" and it was finally closed. Perhaps this phrase will jog Andy's memory...he's only got about 28,500 posts to rememberD.

Be seeing you,
Duck

gumsmug

Thanks everyone for replying.

So as I understand it, if I password protect my entire site - then I should be safe regardless of whether I switch my galleries from private <-> public. Even when any search bots index my keywords & pictures, anyone clicking on the link would be asked to enter in my site password which hopefully they won't be able to guess ;-)

That works for me - if is the way I described.

AnneMcBean

gumsmug wrote:

Thanks everyone for replying.

So as I understand it, if I password protect my entire site - then I should be safe regardless of whether I switch my galleries from private <-> public. Even when any search bots index my keywords & pictures, anyone clicking on the link would be asked to enter in my site password which hopefully they won't be able to guess ;-)

That works for me - if is the way I described.

That sounds correct to me. With either a passworded gallery or a passworded SmugMug site... no one can see what's inside without the password.

Google will know it exists, but nobody gets in without the password.

Google won't know about galleries that were created (and stayed) private, regardless of whether they are passworded or not.

-Anne