Photobucket: Changes to Terms of Service

[thewideeyedowl]

Photobucket is (has been?) a site where you can share photographs and link the image to a 3rd-party site, e.g. Brit Gen. They have just changed their Terms of Service and the linking is no longer allowed for Free Accounts. I believe that this may affect many people who use this forum - you will, I gather, find that your Photobucket image is no longer displayed. There's probably going to be quite a lot of head-banging around here.

I have just picked up on this story from the BBC website and then visited Geek News Central (geeknewscentral dot com) for details, which include this:
Part of the Photobucket Terms of Service has details about types of accounts, pricing, and limits. Anyone can visit Photobucket for free. Anyone can register as a Member for free.
A Free Account provides a Member with 2 GB of free storage or space available for their original photo files or videos that are under 10 minutes. A Free account does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting. (My underlining.)

Basically, if you want to link your photos, then you have got to pay a sub!

I have never used Photobucket - and in view of this, that's probably just as well(!).

Owl

[Lesley Robertson]

Thank you, Owl, I was just reading the report on the BBC website, and you beat me to it!

If a member is affected, there will now be a message where your picture was shown on our site. Go to the Photobucket site, the picture should still be there (I can't check, I didn't use it). I assume that you have the original photos on your own computer, if not, download them now! Photobucket is obviously not going to be a safe storage site....

[Peter_NB]

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't all photos uploaded to and stored on the Brit-Gen Forum server. ? The ones I have posted come straight off my computer.
I am on a classic motoring forum who has suffered because a lot of members had been using Photobucket and now they have threads without photos. Some members there are working to move to another host and upload from there, very time consuming.

Companies such as Amazon and E-Bay have been affected. The word "Ransom" is being used and not surprising.

Here is the link to the BBC article,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40492668

I am also finding media reports from other countries. There are a lot of unhappy Photobucket users out there, many of whom have been complaining for some time about slow uploads and the number of adverts that slow pages to less than a crawl. PB have long advertised a fee paying service but this last move seems to show a deep set problem

There are several other photo hosting companies out there and no doubt many PB users are switching as I write. PB may not be the last hosting company to end the "FREE" service, so please do not rely on them as the sole depository for you scanned or digital images.

[Pam Downes]

I'm now waiting for my BG avatar pic to disappear because I think I uploaded that via PB.
Same with my 'banner' photo on my Facebook account.

Might be another job to put on son's 'to do when you next come to see me' list.

Pam

[Lesley Robertson]

I had a superficial zoom through while waiting for dinner to cook, and couldn't see any....
Hadn't thought about Facebook - I've never used Photobucket but I bet that half of my theatre group have...
Off to check our FB archive.