Don’t want TwitPic to exploit your photos? This Chrome extension will delete them with one click

As Twitter use continues to boom, the associated services that allow users to share their photos are also seeing a boost.

In May 2011, we looked into what many of the Twitter image-sharing services did with users’ photos. Most immediately assumed the commercial rights to uploaded photos, but services like TwitPic and Plixi (before it was acquired) have actually signed deals with news agencies so they can sell popular photos to the media, profiting directly from the sale and giving nothing back to the Twitter user that originally uploaded it.

TwitPic – in particular – states the following in its terms:

You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in media Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your media from the Service provided that any sub-license by TwitPic to use, reproduce or distribute the Content prior to such termination may be perpetual and irrevocable.

You understand and agree, however, that TwitPic may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of your media that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you submit are perpetual and irrevocable. Deleted images are only accessed in the event of a legal issue.

It states that the company will not distribute your images if you remove or delete them from the service. If you have been using TwitPic for a long time, you will have a large number of images that manually need to be deleted.

Luckily, there now exists a tool that allows you to delete all of your TwitPic images from the service with one click. Created by Steven Bullen specifically for Google’s Chrome browser, ‘Delete Twitpic Images‘ loads itself into the browser address bar and requires the user to visit their personal TwitPic page to delete photos.

The user will need to access their TwitPic page located at http://twitpic.com/photos/USERNAME and then log into the service using their Twitter credentials. Once logged in, hit the icon in the address bar and then the tool will automatically delete each of the photos in the account, before taking the user to their account management dashboard, should they wish to delete their account.

Bullen has also provided a TwitPic Exporter tool which can backup all of a user’s images, descriptions and associated tags, allow them to download them to their computers or transfer them to other popular image sharing services including Flickr, Mobypicture and WordPress – platforms that don’t have aggressive rights policies.