We have an update on the Shutterfly front for inactive Shutterfly accounts! A new email from the new Shutterfly CEO says that they are temporarily pausing the deletion of accounts that have been inactive for less than five years.

“This means we are temporarily stopping the deletion of photos for accounts like yours. However, for very old accounts that have been inactive for more than five years, we will still proceed with deleting photos. Rest assured, your photos will remain in your Shutterfly account until we give you further updates about our photo deletion policy.”

This gives people the more opportunities to download photos from their Shutterfly accounts if they don’t plan on continuing with the service.

Accounts that have been inactive for more than five years will proceed with deletion.

Their definition of an active account, per the email:

“… currently defined as anyone who has made a purchase in the previous 18 months…”

Cynic’s View
Because I’m a professional cynic, but my heart’s not in it [TM Blur], I may be tempted to say that they crunched the numbers and they saw that if they deleted all those accounts, their user base would shrink to the point where it would become an existential risk to their bonuses or even the company itself 😉