Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...

[Carrehz]

I'm wondering if bandwidth is how they're getting people.. if that makes sense. So far the only pics I've seen get taken down and replaced with the "no third-party linking" image, are pics that were posted in places where they'd be getting a lot of hits. If that makes sense?

I'm wondering if they're going by active logins possibly. I mean I don't have numbers for it but it would make sense. See something is going on with a service you use would likely send you to the site. But you know see what's, going try to login, and then suddenly your account is affected as well. That way they're targeting their resources to grab the people who are actively using the service instead of people who say haven't logged in in over a year.

Hmm, could be. I just logged in and grabbed my pics and some old pics I had linked to PB (on a page on my own site, that probably no one else would be looking at) are still showing up properly atm, but who knows, maybe they'll be hit soon too

I was wondering if they might be reinstated in July, too. If they had changed the bandwidth cap right down to practically nothing, that'd still suck, but it'd be better than "absolutely no hotlinking at all", if that makes sense... Graaarghhh. I hate all this uncertainty.

[Ponyfan]

The last time I logged in to Photobucket before today was either around Thanksgiving or sometime in the spring. My account said 31% full and the help section said something about free accounts get only 2 GB of space and no hotlinking is allowed on the free version. Also the lowest paid level of membership also doesn't allow  hotlinking . Imnotsurehow I will post my signature pics with Flickr.

Ponyfan

[Libelle]

 

I got an email too. Mine says I have to upgrade to the Plus 50O membership to enable 3rd party hosting. I'm not even sure I can get in Photobucket anymore.

You know, I wonder whether you will have to upgrade to the Plus 500 membership to access your account, or whether it would suffice to upgrade to the least expensive membership option if all you wanted to do is access your pictures and delete your account? Maybe wait a couple of days, check what other people are reporting on the world wide web, and see how things are progressing? I'm keeping my fingers crossed for everyone who has been affected so far!

I feel like they should be able to get into legal trouble over this somehow??? I really hope so??? Especially because they're also doing this to people who were already paying them and basically holding people's data for ransom? You can't just change the terms and services of a site like that with no warning? Especially because then users haven't actually agreed to them?

This business strongly reminds me of LiveJournal's change of terms of service in April of this year: From one day to the next, users were no longer able to access any of their journal entries, pictures, etc. unless they agreed to the new terms of service. They were not even able to delete their account without agreeing. Sadly, LiveJournal was able to get away with it.

[The_Loner]

I use Flickr. Not for posting pictures on here, though, but it's pretty simple to share your Flickr pictures on a site like this one. Good luck! I'm excited to see your photo jrr74

[Taffeta]

Really late reply on this but I think others have covered what the email said, basically the same info as others have said. I haven't been logging into PB so it has nothing to do with active logons. I did a while back but I actually don't have anything of any real importance on PB, thank goodness. I would have been suspicious they were being hacked given all the discussion about amounts and the holding hostage of images - but apparently it is legitimately a policy. I think it's a bad one, but that's their business. I just feel bad for all the folk with a lot of images stored on there. At the very least it is polite to give a month's notice to members to do other things with their accounts. Otherwise in my view it is not much different from ransomware if some people are having to pay to get their images back (the reason I was beginning to debate if it was a hacking of the site).

To add to that, I literally just went to the site and I can access my photos (as much as my browser allows me to now that they are so swamped with ads it kills my browser) so I think the locking out/paying ransom element is not necessarily true in all cases.

I am not planning on trying to retrieve images from PB, so I have no idea how possible that might be to do.

[Carrehz]

I downloaded my pics by going onto my library - on the right side it should say something like "download library" and then you'll be able to download a .zip file of all the pics in your gallery. It doesn't seem to download videos or .gifs though, I guess you need to save those manually?

[Carrehz]

I posted this on the other thread but I'll post it here too just in case - for anyone trying to back up their pics, if you go onto your PB library, on the right there should be a link that says "Download album", and it'll give you a .zip file with all your pics in I tried it and it seems to work fine. Only thing it doesn't download is videos and gifs, it seems you have to save those manually.

(Also you need to download each folder you have seperately, I didn't realize this at first)

[Crowning_Glory13]

Glad I saw this. Man that is a panic for me!!!

[sailorstitch]

I have three different PB accounts on three different email addresses. Maybe six months ago I decided to change the theme of one of my accounts. I deleted EVERYTHING in the account and started uploading new pictures into it. I barely got anything in the account when suddenly PB told me that it was "full". Since then I've been getting emails from them saying "you account has been restricted". If I want my account to not be "restricted" I have to pay them money. Nope, not gonna happen. Last time I checked that was called blackmail!

Luckily, all my pictures are saved on my computer. PB isn't my only copy.

sailorstitch

[pinkkittywinks]

I have to admit that Photobucket has been crashing my browser for months with all its advertising pop ups.

I've just deleted my account, I'm going to go back to using the Classified sales here for my pony sales

Love pkw xxx

[Freeindeed]

Oh, that stinks... I have an ancient Photobucket account that I don't use very much anymore, but it's got a bunch of my old pictures on it. I will have to try to save as many as I can, just in case.

Thanks for the heads up.

[SkyCakes]

I deleted my account its very sad after being a member with them for 11 years. :/ I went to Imgur it wasnt hard or complicated the photos uploaded very fast for me that was good. I hate finding someplace else but there are other places out there that are good for image hosting like Flickr, ect.

[Snapdragon]

Oh no! I have an ancient Photobucket account too, I love paging through all of my ancient photos! Thank you for the tip about the zip folders though!! That'll save me OODLES of time!

[Majesty]

I saw this problem on the MH Arena as well.  I have only a few images on there I'd like to keep just for this site and the mh arena and playstation network.  Can I save the images to my desktop and delete my photobucket images and account?  I don't know if that would work.

[Harmonie]

This is so frustrating. I have relied on PhotoBucket for twelve years or more!

What frustrates me even more than this is that the images that are hosted on other sites have been replaced by that banner in entirety, even on PhotoBucket's site. Images I had hosted there that I used on other sites that were on my older computers I now don't have any access to because PhotoBucket 'erased' them. 

Does everyone think we're made of money nowadays? I always kind of laughed at PhotoBucket trying to get me to upgrade every time I went on the site when over the course of twelve years I had only used like 12% of my allotted storage... but then they pulled this.