Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...

[Majesty]

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What frustrates me even more than this is that the images that are hosted on other sites have been replaced by that banner in entirety, even on PhotoBucket's site.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.

I'm the same way, I hardly used any storage and I kept getting these messages to upgrade my computer and what not to use my photobucket account.  It's been free all this time why now do they want to charge people.  It's like being on amazon and having constant "upgrade to prime" thrown in my face when I'm there.  If they start charging me for using photobucket I'm out.  I'll be avatar-less and signature-less it's fine.
 

[Harmonie]

What on earth PhotoBucket? Do they think we're made of money nowadays... That we don't already have enough bills to be paying?

I relied on PhotoBucket for 12 or so years. They always seemed like the best service. I joined Flickr around a decade ago, but Flickr's a different kind of community that seems more dedicated to photography and public sharing, whereas PhotoBucket seemed more for private hosting under one account.

I have a Flickr, but it has always been for posting photography and never images I used on forums and the like.

What frustrates me more than anything is that the "banner" image they've made to tell us to upgrade has been put over images, like it's completely replaced them, even on the PhotoBucket site. Some of those images I don't have on my current PC and now I can't even retrieve them. Are they really erased? Does PhotoBucket think that pulling such a stunt such as that is going to make me want to pay money to them? They failed the most basic idea of hosting my images.

EDIT: The images have been restored on the PhotoBucket site, now that they aren't be hosted anywhere. I had checked before to see if that was going to happen and it hadn't, so I assumed the worst. Well, at least I can restore those images.

[Lhianneth]

Adding my vote for Flickr to the ring. I haven't used my Photobucket account in quite a long time. When they got sold out a few years ago, and changed the system that your photos were sorted in, I kind of rolled my eyes and let my paid account lapse (I used to have a premium account because I used it for sale photos in another hobby, which used much more bandwidth; not having the premium account meant my photos generally disappeared before the end of 24 hours). Since switching to Flickr for my toy hobby stuff, I haven't looked back even once.

[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.

I'm the same way, I hardly used any storage and I kept getting these messages to upgrade my computer and what not to use my photobucket account.  It's been free all this time why now do they want to charge people.  It's like being on amazon and having constant "upgrade to prime" thrown in my face when I'm there.  If they start charging me for using photobucket I'm out.  I'll be avatar-less and signature-less it's fine.
 

At least Prime is an added service. This is literally just asking us to pay for the same basic service we have been using for free for so long.

I'm shocked it hasn't hit you yet. I recommend you save your avatar and signature to your computer or something ASAP before PhotoBucket erases them by replacing them with the banner asking to upgrade.

[Carrehz]

It's just disgusting. Now, disabling images temporarily until the end of the month if we use up too much bandwidth, like they used to, that's fair enough. But disabling outside linking *completely* for free accounts is just.. I mean, what the heck else was Photobucket used for?!? D: I stopped using it ages ago admittedly (I have my own server) but it was always nice to know it was there as a backup option, and for other people's images. I know I keep saying it but I really can't believe they're pulling a stunt like this, especially since a lot of people have faithfully used them for over 10 years now

[Aadra310]

How do you delete your Photobucket account?


Ponyfan

Hover over your avatar or black and white face image near top right of the screen.  Click "settings."  Then there is a bar near the top that starts with a box, "Personal" and ends with "account."  Do the "account" one and then scroll down to "delete this account."  Gives a warning about backing up your images and such.  I just did it.  Needed a good excuse to get off PB, anyway! 

[Noxxbunny]

Well...can't say I've ever seen a business shoot themselves in the foot any harder than PB just has. What in the world is their team doing?! This is arguably the worst idea I've ever heard of. And it is SO weird who it's affecting and who it isn't. So far...none of my images have been replaced. Neither here or in my very large photo thread on another forum. I'm an active user too. Just...O_o

What would you guys say now is the most private image hosting site? I stuck with PB for so long because I don't want all this tagging stuff, upvoting stuff, rando comments. I just want to host and share in specific places. If I wanna share images with the whole world, I use Instagram or whatever. Flickr is probably out for me though because I would just feel like I'm stinking up the place with my amateur hobby photography and sales photos.

[Baby Sugarberry]

That was not a shot to the foot.  That was a bullet straight to the brain. 
I wish we knew how the company meeting that preceded this went down, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall.

[BethMcBeth]

Whoa talk about a jerky move on their part! Thanks for the heads up!

[Stormness_1]

I'm gonna have to switch. Which hosting service has the best phone app? That's what I usually use PB for now, transferring pics from my phone to forum posts without my cable on the go.

[TheBeatlesPkmnFan42]

I'm gonna have to switch. Which hosting service has the best phone app? That's what I usually use PB for now, transferring pics from my phone to forum posts without my cable on the go.

I haven't used any others so I can't compare it to anything else, but I use Imgur on both mobile and my laptop for my go-to image hosting.

[sailorstitch]

Well...can't say I've ever seen a business shoot themselves in the foot any harder than PB just has. What in the world is their team doing?! This is arguably the worst idea I've ever heard of.

I've seen something nearly as bad. Just this year too. Back in Feb it leaked that American Girl got the bright idea to start permanently attaching the underwear to it dolls. At the SAME TIME they released their very first bathroom with a toilet!  Forcing dolls to go potty with their underwear on.  The AG fans revolted and the company was forced to reverse the idiotic decision.

The only way this isn't as bad as PB is because AG wasn't attaching the underwear and then charging us $400 to get it removed. What PB is doing should be illegal! It's nothing but ransom and blackmail!

sailorstitch

[Noxxbunny]

Well...can't say I've ever seen a business shoot themselves in the foot any harder than PB just has. What in the world is their team doing?! This is arguably the worst idea I've ever heard of.

I've seen something nearly as bad. Just this year too. Back in Feb it leaked that American Girl got the bright idea to start permanently attaching the underwear to it dolls. At the SAME TIME they released their very first bathroom with a toilet!  Forcing dolls to go potty with their underwear on.  The AG fans revolted and the company was forced to reverse the idiotic decision.

The only way this isn't as bad as PB is because AG wasn't attaching the underwear and then charging us $400 to get it removed. What PB is doing should be illegal! It's nothing but ransom and blackmail!

sailorstitch

I did see that even though I don't have any AGs! I didn't see they reversed it though. Glad they did! Because yeah...that was also incredibly stupid. 

This here is some kind of cartoon mustache twirling villain stuff, but like the bumbling joke/idiot villain kind. "We lock up their data and charge them $400 to get it back! Brilliant!Muahahahahaha! ...What do you mean no one is paying the ransom and we're shutting down?"

I expect to see PB gone in a month or two at most if they don't reverse this too. A shame because I was one of those "been using it for a decade" people and I hate what it became the past couple years.

[Loa]

Merged a few topics

[lostpony]

I hate to be an alarmist (ok some of you are not going to believe that I hate to be an alarmist, but still...):

Photobucket isn't just shutting down 3rd party image hosting, they are demanding you pay money to restore access to your own images stored there.  This seems to be a gradual phased-in thing so if you are like me and have a lot of stuff with them that you don't have organized elsewhere, take the time before they lock your images away to go in there and download them all.

If someone knows an automated way to do this, please post instructions here or somewhere to help us.  I only know about the manual method and a couple nights ago I stayed up most of the night manually pushing through image-by-image download of what turned out to be 577 images I had stored there.  This, and starting a new job (first day is today in about an hour Yaay! still have my old job, together will be about 30 hours of pay per week) has set back my effort to deal with fixing up my links and such to make sure my current posts here have their images.  But I will work on that soon beginning with a google drive share with all of them in a big lump.  Google Drive doesn't do embedded image links though so I am going to try and accomplish that with Flickr, which is a yahoo thing so annoyingly will interfere with my email login, ah well.  Gotta love technology (NOT).

No one likes to pay ransom.  It's bad and I think it's probably illegal (extortion) to change terms on us like this but....they are, and will probably continue to get away with it.  Please save your data, and  grab your stuff while you can!

thanks all for listening to my rant.  We'll get through this rough spot and be the stronger for it.  Long live our images!!

**edit:  thanks so much for putting these together for us, Loa.  I'm putting this thread in my sig.