How to Recover Bebo Photos

Bebo was a renowned social media networking website that permitted uploading photos. It was launched a year after Facebook (2005) and even overtook it, as well as Google, in the United Kingdom and Ireland for a short while. While it had over 40 million users around the globe at its peak, it lost the race, was sold to AOL, then back to its original owners. It was also rebranded as a live-streaming platform before settling on the model of a smaller, invite-only social media platform. We suppose you know all that — this is merely a reminder for the returning members. With that said, let’s jump straight into how to recover Bebo photos.

Member of Bebo before March 2015? Read this

As mentioned above, Bebo went through a few restructures and reformulations since 2005. A change in ownership means the data bounced back and forth between different companies and teams. However, Bebo gave its users 6 months to download their data back in 2015. In mid-2015, all Bebo data, including accounts and photos, was deleted. Although this method shouldn’t work at the time of writing, we’ll demonstrate it for 3 reasons:

1. The platform may employ a similar or identical method for data recovery in the future
2. Co-founder Michael Birch relaunched Bebo in 2021. While he claims all data was lost in 2015, he may suggest alternatives to Customer Service representatives, making method 1 possible
3. The familiar interface and sign in procedure can help jog your memory of your old username, e-mail address, or password

Steps used to download Bebo photos in the past

Start by downloading a Bebo app for Android and iOS. At the time of writing, the app is unavailable through official means. However, the latest version before reformulation, 1.5.8, released on March 24, 2015, can still be found on the Internet in the form of a .apk file for Android. Downloading it is risky and shouldn’t produce results, so you’re better off checking screenshots or past videos. With that said, you could follow these instructions in the past:

1. Launch the app but do not sign with your primary account. Instead, create a new one.
2. After logging in, you’ll see a Bebo bot (@temabebo) at the top of the list of contacts in the upper left corner.
3. Start chatting with the bot. Enter #OldPhotos as your message.
4. Bot will automatically redirect you to a login panel.
5. Ideally, enter your username or e-mail address, followed by your password. However, entering the e-mail address alone works as well.
6. Tap on Continue.
7. Wait for an e-mail containing a link to the ZIP archive to arrive in your Inbox.
8. Download and extract the photos from Bebo inside. They’ll be inside folders separated by date, such as 2014-08-04.

1. Recover photos from new Bebo accounts

To clarify, by new, we mean any Bebo account created after February 2021. With that said, Bebo is now led by a small team, has an intentionally limited community, and has started from scratch. Therefore, they don’t have any backup measures in place. Consequently, there is no streamlined way to perform Bebo photo recovery yourself. Thankfully, Bebo left a direct way to get in touch with Customer Support representatives:

1. Optional. Sign in to Bebo.
2. Head over to the Bebo Contact Support page.
3. Click on “How do I get my original Bebo photos back?” or “None of the above”.
4. Select the “This does not answer my question” button.
5. Fill out the requested fields:
   1. Your Name
   2. Email address
   3. Subject
   4. Message — Keep it concise but provide all necessary details besides your personal information.
   5. Optional. Click on “Upload Screenshot” if you can demonstrate the problem with a picture.
6. Click on Send.
7. Wait for a response to the e-mail address you provided. Continue the correspondence.

Note. Seeing as how the co-founder revived Bebo, it’s likely the official Support Twitter account (@teambebo) and e-mail address ([email protected]) will become active shortly if they aren’t already.

2. Recovering photos from Bebo via Wayback Machine

We frequently bring up Archive.org’s Wayback Machine, especially when the blog or social media posts are concerned. Just as with Reddit, Twitter, or YouTube, Wayback Machine created multiple snapshots of Bebo.com on (likely) a daily basis, multiple times a day, starting in 2005. Thus, as long as you have time to search, some luck, and ideally, a URL to your profile or some of your pictures, you may leave victorious. With that acknowledged, follow these instructions to recover photos from Bebo using Wayback Machine: 

1. Visit the Wayback Machine page on the Internet Archive’s website.
2. Enter “http://bebo.com”, https://bebo.com/”, or a URL you have.
3. Use the graph at the top to select a year.
4. Utilize the calendar below to select a date and time.
5. Select one of the available snapshots indicated by the time of day.
6. If you can’t find your Bebo images, go back and try a different date or snapshot on that day.