Image: Related PressUpdate: Flickr is recovering the photographs and is giving the bad man free Pro membership until 2036.
Update 2: Yahoo asks us to add this statement: "Yahoo,
Windows 7 32 Bit! is happy to share that the Flickr staff has completely restored a member’s account that was mistakenly deleted yesterday. We regret the human error that led to the mistake and have worked hard to rectify the situation,
Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, including reloading the entire photo portfolio and providing the member with 25 years of free Flickr Pro membership. Flickr takes the trust of our members very seriously and we appreciate the patience shown by this member and our community. Flickr will also soon roll out functionality that will allow us to restore deleted accounts more easily in the future."
Previously:
This is awful. Flickr accidentally deleted the entire account of one its users -- a paying,
Windows 7 Professional Key, Pro user no less --,
microsoft Office 2010 keygen, removing 4 years worth of pictures. What happened is the user reported another user for lifting his copyrighted images and Flickr accidentally deleted his account instead of the infringing user's.
Whoops.
What about backups?
Apparently there aren't any. The pictures are gone.
Flickr apologized profusely and offered him four years of free of charge Pro memberships but that's hardly much of a consolation. We want to be even-handed and find Yahoo an excuse or a mitigating factor but can't think of any.
Here's the blog post explaining the situation (be warned the headline has an F word in it, which is hardly surprising) and more details from the Observer.
Very Related: Yahoo, Not Facebook,
Office 2007 License, Is Bleeding Flickr To Death →