Now that nearly everyone has a digital camera, a whole new "photo sharing industry" has emerged to help users decide what to do with all those pictures. If you want to share pictures of, say, a brand new grandchild with your far-flung family members you can upload them to one of many free photo-sharing sites, whereupon your relatives can easily log on and view them. They can also download and print the photos.

Among the most popular photo-sharing sites are Flickr.com, Kodakgallery.com, Shutterfly.com, Snapfish.com, and Photobucket.com. Beyond these, all the "social networking" sites, such as MySpace.com, let you upload photos and even videos.

Although these sites allow free uploading and free viewing, there are many "upgrade services" that can be purchased, such as having high resolution glossy prints delivered to your home or having them available for pick-up at a Target or Walgreens store. The options are way too many to list here, but the chart at the bottom of this page compares the major ones side by side.

To join any of these services you will be asked for an email address and a password. Do NOT give them the password used to access that email account — create one especially for each photo-sharing service.

All these services allow for posting and receiving comments about each photo, and some let you start a regular blog for expanding on the comments. If you expect to be posting and/or receiving lots of comments you may prefer using a site like MySpace.com, which encourages users to be as verbose as they want.

Although many consider MySpace to be a "young person's" site, many "mature" adults are now taking advantage of the site's numerous free services. Like all social-networking sites, MySpace asks you to fill out a "profile," which lets viewers learn things about you. Yes, there have been headline-making predators who have created phony profiles and done evil things on MySpace and other such sites, but they can be avoided with plain old common sense. I enjoy sharing things with my friends at www.myspace.com/donedrington.

Password Stealing Trick

Speaking of MySpace, I once had my password stolen there and had to create a new one. It took me a while to figure out how this happened, but I finally did. Here's the scoop: it's possible for hackers to see and copy whatever is on your "Windows clipboard" whenever you log onto a website. Well, I had been in the habit of entering my password by copying it from a list and then pasting it into MySpace's log-in box.

Well, a nefarious hacker can't read a coded password that has been typed in, but he can copy your "clipboard" contents and combine it with your visibly typed user name. The lesson: type in your password. Or, if you do copy and paste it, immediately select and copy some other benign text. This will replace your password on the clipboard and be worthless to a hacker.

Don's Tips on How To Avoid Receiving Spam

© — Donald Ray Edrington — All Rights Reserved

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