Digital Media

Want to share fun and memorable pictures with family members without blasting them all over the internet? No worries! With the evolution of communication technology, there are plenty of applications and services available to us that allow the secure sharing of our private data with our near and dear ones. From cloud storage drives, messenger apps to social network options, there are a variety of options to share your photo and video albums with family and friends. If you have folders full of memorable and interesting photographs and videos to share with your loved ones, you have more ways than ever to give them out. In this blog, we will discuss a few interesting, effective and secure ways to share photos with your family. So, keep reading! Cloud Drives Do you have an account with Google, Microsoft, iCloud or Microsoft? If yes, sharing photos and videos privately with your friends and family is at your fingertips. These cloud storage services allow users to create private folders that can be accessed by others when given permission. While these storage services allow invitees to view and add items to the shared folders, no outsiders can access them. You can even use these Cloud storage spaces to back up your important data. To share photographs with your loved ones using these platforms, you just need to know the email address of the individuals you want to share with. Closed Facebook Groups Facebook is a networking site that not only allows you to be social but also lets you share your photos privately with your close circle. Though this platform is not considered to be truly private, the platform comes with some attractive options that let you share your images and videos only with the people you want. One of the attractive options from Facebook is the private group. Apart from sharing images privately, these private groups make a great virtual meeting place for members of these groups. To create such a group, click on the 'Groups' option on the left of the Facebook website or app and then choose the 'Create Group' option. Give your group a relevant name, invite your family members and friends to join the group and then select a privacy setting. While setting the privacy, you will come across different group types. However, as you want the communication to be private, select 'Closed Group' or 'Secret Group'. With a 'Secret' group, only the group members can see and access posted content. The content published in such groups remains invisible to outsiders. Instant Messaging Apps With the advancement of technology, you can now share images with your family instantly without making them social. So, if you don't care about archiving your photographs and videos while sharing them, start using instant messaging apps to share pictures quickly and easily. These messaging applications also allow you to create group chats where you can add your family members or friends to check pictures within seconds. However, unlike other sharing options, instant messaging apps neither help in retrieving your old photographs nor in organizing them. There are several instant messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, Instagram Message and Apple iMessage from where you can choose to share your photographs privately. Shared Email Inboxes Email is a very effective medium to share private images and data. You just need to have an email id to enjoy the benefits of shared email inboxes. After creating a shared inbox, you can give access to it to a small group for adding and viewing picture-laden emails from their preferred devices. So, to get started, create a new email id and give access to that inbox by sharing your login credentials with your trusted group. Now, to share your images with your family members, send a message to that email address attaching photographs to the email. Each of the methods we have discussed in this blog has its own merits and demerits. Facebook is ubiquitous, messaging apps are fast and easy, while cloud storage services offer both sharing and backup features. Apart from the above-mentioned methods, there are plenty of others like ‘Private’ photo-sharing apps, Flickr, WeTransfer and so on that allow us to share images and other private data with our family securely. Of course, you can always go old school and take your photos to print shops for more printouts. But that's a lengthy process and can make things hard in our modern, fast-paced life. *** Resources: https://www.popsci.com/share-photos-privately/ https://comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/share-photos-online-privately/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-ways-share-photos-videos-privately-family/