Why do my mobile uploads to Flickr multiply?

Flickr: How can I backup my photos?

• Given the news today that a Flickr user had 5 years of photos deleted (4000+ photos) and given that Flickr says it is irreversible, I'm wondering what the best way is to continually backup my photos from Flickr onto another medium.  There are a number of photos (older ones and mobile uploads) for which I don't have a local copy or a copy that went from local->offsite backup.

• Answer:

  This seems to be the first instance of Flickr making this mistake since they began operation, so the risk seems low. But then, they never promised to be a backup service for you in the first place: But to start, you should have planned from the start to back-up our images before you even sent them to Flickr. Since you did not, the first step is to pull all of the photos from your Flickr account. See: Then, considering using a photo management package that uploads to Flickr for you. These tend to also store other information about your photo, so it does not get lost. See: and I find that Lightroom, which uploads to Flickr painlessly, can also store your original caption/description and photo title and even keeps a log of user comments for each photo! You would not be able to get the comments back up to Flickr if the photo was deleted from their servers, but at least you would have the original record stored somewhere.