[Feature Request] Introduce Privacy with Camera Upload Feature

Feature Suggestions
1

Hello,

Lately, I’m trying to use the Camera Upload feature that is offered in PMS and portable devices. I came across some concerns that I will try to highlight here.

I’m running PMS as a service for years with the advantage being that PMS starts without any user being logged in to my Windows computer. All Windows users, phones, laptops, consoles and smart TVs are accessing the PMS (that runs as a service), either locally or remotely.

Note that running the PMS as a service offers some benefits but what I describe below also apply when a single user runs his/her own PMS and invites friends.

Background:

  1. I have invited some PLEX friends into my PMS Home in order to share to them my media.
  2. The friends I invited are all members of my family.
  3. Some of these friends (not all of them) have already an account in my Windows machine where PMS is running as a a service
  4. The friends that have an account, do not have permission (and will not have in the future) to start their own PMS. Starting several PMSs on the same machine is NOT an option (I know that this would solve a lot of issues, but let’s see the big picture).
  5. Since PMS runs as a service it has access to the entire directory structure of my system regardless of Windows user permissions.

Specifically for the Camera Upload feature:

  1. I gave the permission in PMS to all my friends to upload media from their portable devices to my PMS.
  2. Friends successfully upload media to my PMS.

The problem:
As the server is common, all friends and I, immediately see the content other friends have uploaded.
This is not always a nice option in terms of privacy and also it increases cluttering in terms of what each friend is seeing from my PMS. For example, apart from the privacy issues between invited friends, I do not want to see what my daughter is uploading to my server as most of the times we are talking about selfies (if I want to check/control what she is uploading I can do it otherwise).

Workaround for cluttering but not for privacy:

  1. In PMS, I have created a Photos Library dedicated to each invited friend.
  2. As PMS runs as a service, each dedicated Photos Library can have access to the Windows account of the corresponding friend, if the friend has an account. Thus, the photo library can be associated with a personal folder of the friend and the friend can directly upload media to its own personal Windows folders. If the friend does not have an account, I associate a “guest” Windows folder of my choosing.
  3. For each of my friends, I share the media libraries I want and also the Photos Library dedicated to this friend. Thus each friend sees only what I share (i.e. my media and his/her dedicated library) and does not see what other friends are uploading.
  4. The friend can upload media to its own Photos Library that end up to its own Windows user account.
  5. A scheduled script for each Windows account takes care of the media file ownership.

Problems with the workaround:

  1. The workaround does not solve what I, as a Home owner can see. I can see everything when I access the PMS with my PLEX account.
  2. I used to use my PLEX account to watch media on my smart TVs. Friends are using their own accounts by using the “switch user” feature. In order to avoid navigating across useless for me Photo Libraries of my friends (and of course respect their privacy), I’m forced to create a separate managed PMS Home account and to use this account for all “public” clients in my home (i.e. this means that I also need to transfer my Watched/Unwatched status to the new account). This is not convenient at all.

Proposed solution and enhancement:

  1. To enforce privacy without affecting the way the feature is currently implemented, please think of the following:
    If the PMS Home owner decides to enable Camera Upload for a friend, then the Home owner has to select if the permission for a private library of the friend will be granted.
    If the PMS Home owner does not grant permission for a private library for the friend, then the friend will still be able to use a Photos Library for uploading media, as it is done today. The friend’s media however will be public.
    If the PMS Home owner grants permission for a private library for uploading media, then the PMS Home owner has to create a dedicated library for this friend and associate the desired Windows folder.
    The invited friends must be able to choose where to upload their media. If they choose to upload to their dedicated library then their content is private. If they choose to upload to another PMS offered library then their content is public.
    The dedicated library will not be visible to other invited friends.
    The invited friends must have the option to allow/deny access of the PMS Home owner to their dedicated library content.
    In any case the PMS Home owner may at anytime remove the friend from the Home and consequently remove all friend’s media.

  2. To keep things clean for the PMS Home owner, the PMS Home owner may choose if this library will be visible in his own libraries list or not.
    If the PMS Home owner choose to not see (i.e. to hide) the dedicated libraries then they will not appear in his/her devices or web.
    The PMS Home owner may at anytime change this setting however he/she will not be able to access the media of those friends that
    do not allow the PMS Home owner to see.

  3. A very useful addition would be that the invited friend is able to update his own dedicated library, as in the meantime he/she might have changed some media files from the folder where they are stored (highly possible if the friend has a user account in the same machine where PMS runs).

Best regards

2

Plex have announced the “camera upload” feature will be discontinued.

In line with this announcement, we’re closing related feature suggestions.