Well, photobucket finally killed itself

[great white]

I've used photobucket for a long time, pretty much since it started.

granted, it was as a "free" user.

Over the years, it's gotten more and more messed up, going from a light and easy to use platform to a more and more irritating and monetized PITA.

Well, now they've broken the final straw. Unannounced, they disabled all third party hosting and have replaced the images with this:



Basically, you have to pay 39.99 a month or the bargain rate of 399 per year.

I guess the cutting out of useful features, endless pop ups and plethora of advertising wasn't paying the bills.

To add insult to injury, they also turned off the "download album" feature. You'd have to go through every image in your bucket and "right click/save as" to get them off the bucket.

The final kick to the crotch is they turned off the "delete account option". So they've got your pics, whether yo like it or not.

Basically, it's the photobucket version of "randsomware".

It was fun while it lasted, but photobucket is dead. If you don't have your photos backed up somewhere else, I'd get them copied off photobucket if I were you.

I predict their latest cash grab will be their last.

Welcome to "myspace" status Mr photobucket......too bad, it used to be a very good "free" service.

[emm-dee]

?????????????

I just checked my Photobucket account and nothing has changed. I looked at their "plans" and the $39 one is for 510 gig of storage. Pretty sure that level is for photo professionals...who else would need that much space.

I sense a "hack" here. The normal photobucket logon is preceded by a letter and 3 or 4 numbers then the web id (i.e., s1111.photobucket.com). I have the 10 gig free plan and have never seen any popup ads, can still download an entire album (photos only...videos have always required individual downloads). My account has over 150 photos loaded and shows I'm using 4% of total storage available.

[BandJCarm]

I heard this from another source. But I can't see anything that has changed, other than the banner saying "We've updated our terms of service". Seems they have added layers of paid accounts, and increased the fees maybe. But hosting........well, testing to see if it still works....

[BandJCarm]

I am not sure what "3rd party hosting" really means. I first thought it meant that you couldn't reference a pic's URL to share, such as on this site. But obviously it doesn't, since the above picture posted fine.

So.......I am not exactly sure what is going on. But other than annoying ads, which even disconnect.me can't obliviate, I don't see a change.

That said, I'd LOVE to find a site that allowed picture storage AND allowed insite pic resizing. Photobucket has it.......but it stops working for me and many others........and after I emailed them to report it, I got "Yes, we know, and we are sorry. We are unable to determine why it fails only for some users", which to me means they aren't really trying to find that problem. Oddly, sometimes I can resize, which is required for some websites to share pics there. There is no rhyme or reason to why it works sometimes and fails sometimes. But I can't find a single other storage site that allows resizing. So now to share on some websites, I have to resize the pic first, then store it.........doable, but would be nice to do it all at once.

EDIT: This is from their new announcement:
"Photobucket offers photo and video storage, 3rd party image hosting, image linking, ......etc etc etc......... ". SO, this differentiates between 3rd party hosting, and image linking. Image linking is all I care about, and it still works best I can tell.

2nd Edit: From their own website, my definition appears to be wrong. Imbedding pictures is 3rd party hosting. Yet, my example above worked. So I R Corn-fused.

[wmtire]

Yeah, I had saw stuff on the internet about that. I hope there is some misunderstandings, since we have a lot of members posts, with links to photobucket.

It could sure mess up some threads.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/354711/ph...s-the-internet

EDIT: Photobucket's own site does seem to confirm the OP

http://support.photobucket.com/hc/en...226850-Linking

[rsdata]

granted, it was as a "free" user.

I am also a free user... and have been for quite some time... I have about 3 GIG stored there.

3 GIG is nothing when servers are measured in terabytes and petabytes. I access my pictures once or twice a year which in terms of bandwidth is a spit in the ocean. I don't do ANY third party hosting using their site as that adds tremendously to the load I put on their servers.

As I look at the site from the states, I can use their storage facilities for $60/year which I guess I will have to pay if I want them to continue to store up to 60 GIG of photos or 20 times the usage I now have. If I did use their hosting, YES I would have to spend $399/yr.

Seems to me if you wanted to retrieve your photos you WOULD pay $5.99 for a month of service to be able to download your precious photo albums that you allowed them to store for you for all of these years.

Back in the day the internet was FREE... but not anymore. Instead of complaining about it, pay your $6 and get your photos.

[Jeff_and_Abby]

"FWIW" ... welcome to "The Cloud."

Some of us "Old" I.T. professionals don't so much share the "vision ..."

We would rather keep our pictures, our financials, our writings ... on our own devices.

"Out there" is a great place for a backup copy ... but, who do you really trust ???

One rule we have tried to live by, is that "Data does not really exist, until it exists in at least two geographically disparate locations." That means, you need a backup copy under your control and not under the same roof ... sorta like NOT putting all your eggs in one basket.

Every now and then, someone comes along with what used to be their hard drive full of baby pictures, wedding pictures, etc. Not much you can do when it is truly a goner. The MTBF ( mean time between failure ) for a rotating disk drive is approximately five years ... and for these solid state drives / memory sticks, etc ... figure about 10,000 write cycles MTBF - and every time you read/view, the directory at the front is updated - written to - hence why they just seem to "die" after so many years for no apparent reason.

[m35a2]

For ssd a "write cycle" is the capacity of the drive. So a write cycle on a 500GB ssd drive is 500GB worth of writes.

[BandJCarm]

test

[Herk7769]

Originally Posted by m35a2

For ssd a "write cycle" is the capacity of the drive. So a write cycle on a 500GB ssd drive is 500GB worth of writes.

Excellent article on pros and cons of SSDs.

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-ssds...ease-lifespan/

As they state, reading does not use up write cycles and you can write 220 Terabytes worth of data to a 750 Gigabyte SSD before it becomes unreliable.

That is a lot of writing. The equivalent of backing up 2 Blu-Ray disks to the hard drive, every day for 12 years.

[great white]

Originally Posted by rsdata

Seems to me if you wanted to retrieve your photos you WOULD pay $5.99 for a month of service to be able to download your precious photo albums that you allowed them to store for you for all of these years.

Back in the day the internet was FREE... but not anymore. Instead of complaining about it, pay your $6 and get your photos.

No, you missed the point completely. It's not about "getting my photos" it's about changing terms of service without notice.

All my pics are also on my personal devices, so I'm not vetching about my "precious albums".

Oddly enough, the "third party" shows up on some of my pictures and some it does not.

Downloading and deleting are still turned off in photobucket for me and I have a tiny amount in my "account".

I'm not complaining about not being able to download my pictures off a "free" site, I'm complaining about a free site taking my content and then locking it down after the fact and demanding money for it. There was no disclaimer of the site owning your data once you had uploaded it either. That's the "cloud" version of a "randsomware" hack.

The blogger world is up in arms already about it. Lots of broken image links and lots of work to fix it.

Here's the "new" terms of service as of 28 Jun 2017, these are different than the previous terms:

Types of Accounts, Pricing and Limits

• Visiting : There is no cost to visit the Site or to register as a Member.
• Free account : Each individual Member gets one free account that provides 2 GB of free storage or space available for your original photo files, or videos under 10min. The free account does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting. If a free account Member exceeds their Content Limit, their account will be immediately suspended and they will need to become a “Paying Member” (defined below) in order to continue accessing their account. You can upgrade to a Plus account at any time.
• Ad-free Account : The Ad-free Account offers Members the ability to use the Site without seeing any third party banner advertisements when logged into your Ad-free Account (note, viewers of your images within Photobucket will see ads unless they, too, have Plus accounts and you will continue to see Photobucket offers and announcements). This account level is available for $2.49 / month, payable by the Member on a monthly recurring basis.
• Plus Account : The Plus Account offers several paid options that may give the Paying Member more storage, bandwidth, 3rd party image hosting, image linking and/or other services as outlined below. Once and during such period of time in which you subscribe to and pay for a Plus Account, we will consider you a "Paying Member." Please note that all Plus Account subscriptions are billed annually at the commencement of the service. Photobucket may also offer a monthly billing option for its Plus Accounts (see terms and restrictions, below).

• Available Plus AccountPlans : Photobucket offers the following Plus Account Plans:

o Plus 50 Plan: 52 GB of Storage for $59.99 / Year. The Plus 50 Plan does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting.
o Plus 100 Plan: 102 GB of Storage for $99.99 / Year. The Plus 100 Plan allows for unlimited image linking but does not allow 3rd party image hosting.
o Plus 500 Plan: 500 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3rd party image hosting.

If you note the red bolded passages above, the least expensive option you get for image linking is 99.99 per year. 399.99 gets you third party image hosting.

399.99 per year gets you the services that were "free" prior to releasing new terms of use as of 27 Jun 2017. They simply changed it, they didn't give you any notice or time to to what you might have wanted with your images. That's dirty pool, even though they can technically/legally do what they want with their private site.

The really devious part of it all is that they turned off the option to delete a photo or delete the account with no notice or change in the terms of use. Basically, they own your images now....whether you like it or not. Nit what I agreed to in the terms of use agreement I originally accepted. Only way they get around that being underhanded is if they had a clause buried in the original agreement that they can change it whenever they wish without notice. I certainly don't remember that when I accepted it so long ago.

Personally, I don't agree with tactics like this and will not be using PB any longer. I would also delete my accounts, if I still had that option. No skin off PB's butte I would guess, but it matters to me.....

[Bacchus]

Just keep in mind that all it takes is a small breeze to come up and blow the cloud away and you are left with nothing but a clear blue sky.

[BandJCarm]

Originally Posted by great white

No, you missed the point completely. It's not about "getting my photos" it's about changing terms of service without notice.

All my pics are also on my personal devices, so I'm not vetching about my "precious albums".

Oddly enough, the "third party" shows up on some of my pictures and some it does not.

Downloading and deleting are still turned off in photobucket for me and I have a tiny amount in my "account".

I'm not complaining about not being able to download my pictures off a "free" site, I'm complaining about a free site taking my content and then locking it down after the fact and demanding money for it. There was no disclaimer of the site owning your data once you had uploaded it either. That's the "cloud" version of a "randsomware" hack.

The blogger world is up in arms already about it. Lots of broken image links and lots of work to fix it.

Here's the "new" terms of service as of 28 Jun 2017, these are different than the previous terms:
If you note the red bolded passages above, the least expensive option you get for image linking is 99.99 per year. 399.99 gets you third party image hosting.

399.99 per year gets you the services that were "free" prior to releasing new terms of use as of 27 Jun 2017. They simply changed it, they didn't give you any notice or time to to what you might have wanted with your images. That's dirty pool, even though they can technically/legally do what they want with their private site.

The really devious part of it all is that they turned off the option to delete a photo or delete the account with no notice or change in the terms of use. Basically, they own your images now....whether you like it or not. Nit what I agreed to in the terms of use agreement I originally accepted. Only way they get around that being underhanded is if they had a clause buried in the original agreement that they can change it whenever they wish without notice. I certainly don't remember that when I accepted it so long ago.

Personally, I don't agree with tactics like this and will not be using PB any longer. I would also delete my accounts, if I still had that option. No skin off PB's butte I would guess, but it matters to me.....

Not in way of argument. Just trying to understand.

I just went and deleted a long-held photo off my account. It deleted fine.

I also linked a photo, above, onto this website and it showed up.

Why do those things work fine for me when you are saying they no longer do? My account is a FREE account, never paid. I hate the ads, but I don't pay.

????

[BandJCarm]

test

https://secure.shoeboxapp.com/photo/...d25d728ecd0402

[Jeff_and_Abby]

Originally Posted by BandJCarm

test

https://secure.shoeboxapp.com/photo/...d25d728ecd0402

As of time of this reply, the link you posted was still valid, we see trees / forest. Our IP / MAC addresses should be dissimilar to yours etc.

[great white]

Don't ask me why or how, but if I use chrome instead of other browsers I can download and delete albums.....

[southpaw821]

Do the simple thing. Get Office 365.. $60 a year through Costco. 1TB of cloud storage, plus all.of the Office applications.

[emm-dee]

Originally Posted by great white

Don't ask me why or how, but if I use chrome instead of other browsers I can download and delete albums.....

Have had no problems using Safari or the iPhone photobucket app. Maybe things will change but so far I have not seen any difference in the way the website has worked for several years.

[TeachTexas]

Originally Posted by great white

Don't ask me why or how, but if I use chrome instead of other browsers I can download and delete albums.....

Have you tried clearing your histories and cookies on the other browsers?
Just a thought

[Janet H]

As noted the Photobucket issue as real and for forum users a real concern. It measn that images you have hosted at Photobucket and have hot licked to here at FRF are no longer displaying. There is little we can do about this as Photobucket has denied access to display them here.

You can load images directly to posts here and I strongly encourage this so they will be preserved for others. Tech threads have been especially hard hit with many great "how to" images now missing.

Please remember - you can load images directly into posts using the advanced post editor. You can also load images to you photo albums here and then hot link (same as Photopost) to posts on the forum.