I've often seen advice to host photos on Flickr and link them here on UER, rather than uploading them here. The reason given is to avoid UER's photo compression. You do this by going to Flickr, clicking Share, picking bbcode and copying the gobbledygook; then you go to UER and paste it in a post. For example,
IMG_6425 by
Ganesha Ganesha, on Flickr
Let's take a closer look at the gobbledygook. If we just look at the tags and literals, this boils down to:
[url][eimg][/eimg][/url] [url][/url] by [url]username[/url] on Flickr |
(Sorry about the "eimg" markup, it should be "img".) So you're posting three links. The first one tells UER where to get the image, and makes the image a link to a Flickr page containing the image. (Note that if you delete the image in Flickr, this link still works.) The second one makes a link to Flickr labeled with the image's title. The third one makes a link to Flickr labelled with the Flickr username.
So, what we're really talking about here is a hole in UER's security; that is, a conduit to a completely different website, Flickr. This gives people you don't know access to your whole Flickr website. If it's your personal RL Flickr website, your real name and perhaps other personal information is hanging out there. So is that of all of your followers. If you use your Flickr username on other websites, a curious person can google it and follow you there, too.
If you're a professional photographer, this just boils down to more traffic for your gallery. However, sad to say, there are a few bad apples among UER's membership. They may mine your Flickr page for site locations and personal information. They may send you FlickrMail that you won't enjoy reading, via anonymous Flickr accounts that can't be traced.
What to do, if you care about this issue? Some alternatives:
1. Edit the gobbledygook, removing everything after the first "/url" link. This keeps your Flickr userid (your name?) from being displayed in UER. But the image still works as a link. Try it:
2. Create an anonymous Flickr account. Best create an anonymous email address for it, too.
3. Don't use Flickr; just upload your photos to UER. I think they look okay, and Av says he has plenty of disk space for them.
Related; a discussion of the risks of being personally identifiable on UER,
http://www.uer.ca/...=1&threadid=120404