We received a support email overnight asking a question about downloading tagged Facebook photos, and thought that it was a topic worth quickly writing a blog about.
The query was whether or not SocialSafe can download photos you are tagged in (that aren’t your own), even after the uploader has deleted them from Facebook. The answer is unfortunately ‘no’, although this is nothing to do with SocialSafe, but is in fact down to Facebook’s API, which determines what can lawfully be seen, accessed and downloaded.
Having said that, if you have already used SocialSafe to download your tagged photos from Facebook and then the user removes them from Facebook or deactivates their account, then you will still have a copy of them – along with any comments, likes and tags – safely stored in your SocialSafe library.
The same goes for all of the other content that you back up with SocialSafe – should anything happen to the originals on the networks themselves, if you’ve backed it up to your SocialSafe library then it will be yours to keep forever.
With social network profiles coming under increasing scrutiny when people are applying for jobs and even if the content depicts harmless fun, when viewed out of context by someone else it could mean the difference between landing that dream job or not. So understandably people are purging their social accounts of content, but this can have a collateral affect on their friends’ online memories too.
If you don’t want to run the risk of losing any of the moments from your past that make you you, then use SocialSafe to download your own library of you from your social networks, and make sure that you are the one who has ownership of your data.