So...Ok, a little background. I'm not sure if anyone pays attention to this or not...but I check once in a while.
The site is currently getting bombarded with Spammers, the last 3 mos. have seen a real increase over what it used to be.
The admins on the site can view what guests are doing on the site. I've been watching a bit to see what's what. Some are legitimate, like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. indexing our site for keywords & topics to bolster & steer appropriate search results to the site. (That's all good.)
We, of course, have the normal guests that have a legitimate interest in the site.
And...we have special 'guests' from all over the world, Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia that are also trolling through the site. Recently I monitored a 'guest' from Sub-Saharan Africa printing topics...that concerns me a bit.
In the interest of protecting everyone, my recommendation was to keep the uploaded photo's for guests unviewable. Hosted photos (Photobucket & Picasa, etc) will continue to be viewable as the site doesn't control that info.
I use hosted photos b/c they don't take up site space and I understand the risks, but I'm not sure all members really do, so my thought was to err on the side of caution.
As Jason said...we will happily sign up any guest who wants to enjoy all the site has to offer.