The all inclusive PhotoBucket issues,problems and solutions

[RossABQ]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Just checked, and ALL my stuff is gone! Completely! I don't know why different people are still seeing their pics, but my account shows 0 bytes stored, and I got the great offer below. I deleted my account and won't go back. Absolutely the WORST site I have ever used.

 

[Syberia]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

You're one step from where you should be, but nice work so far.
I've had my share of dynamic DNS services, and they all either flop, or go the same route as PhotoBucket over the years.

Go out and buy your own domain name, and then find yourself a non-free dynamic dns service.

I use namecheap.com for my registrar, and they include DDNS hosting for zones registered with them. That "included" DDNS is completely separate from the free DDNS they offer to the public.

I have a domain name, that links to my (paid) DynDNS account, but for some reason when I try to link the image through it, it doesn't show up. Works fine in a browser window, but doesn't show up on the forum.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

[NUTTSGT]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard



I went to PB and was already logged and grabbed an IMG link.


It appears to be working but I already have a paid Pro account with 2500 pictures on PB. Going to **** if I were to have to download all them as we just got a new computer and put alot of them on disc before I swapped for the new PC.

 

[mike in tucson]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Why would anybody trust another party to store any important data? Storage is so cheap these days, it seems irresponsible to give important stuff to somebody you don't know.... send me your life savings and I will "store" it for you.....right. We have mirrored drives and have three archive drives that are updated daily and one is stored off site. No way am I storing anything in Bill's cloud or his ***.

 

[NUTTSGT]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

I checked my PB account:


Your account is set to recur payments
Yearly — Your next payment is on Oct 26th, 2017

I guess we will see what happens, I'm paid up till Fall.


Everybody that has lost pics, are you a "free" user or a paid member ?

 

[bobpal]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

I'm a SmugMug user and it has worked well for me for many years. They have a $50 per year plan which allows you to store any number of photos at very high resolution if you like, or, actually any resolution. If you are interested you can use THIS link to check them out (note: I get a small one-time credit if you use that link to order).

My SmugMug site is how I share photos with family and friends as well as forums. I also sell photos from my site.

 

[LB-1911]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Hmm.......link doesn't work for me.

Anyway, now that Photobucket is worthless, and imgur is a no go, is there a preferred FREE photo hosting place for posting pics at garage journal?

Try this -
http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=324287

IDNWTFID.......

 

[RossABQ]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

...
Everybody that has lost pics, are you a "free" user or a paid member ?

Free user since '04. Their speed and site stability have gone downhill fast for the last 5 years.

 

[Syberia]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Free user. Links don't work but can still access/download photos. Site has been extremely slow for the last year or so.

 

[SignalZero]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Free user. Links don't work but can still access/download photos. Site has been extremely slow for the last year or so.

Same - Free and can still get in my account and view the photographs.


I do keep most of my photos on an external hard drive. But some of the photos I have on photobucket (and even cardomain if anyone remembers that site) are from over a decade ago when I had a different computer which crashed. I simply haven't downloaded the older pictures, but I will be saving the ones I want to keep tonight.

Luckily, there's not a whole lot in my PB account that isn't backed up elsewhere that I need to have. I feel bad for the people that can't access stuff they intended to keep as they really had no warning from PB.

 

[dogdog]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Why would anybody trust another party to store any important data? Storage is so cheap these days, it seems irresponsible to give important stuff to somebody you don't know.... send me your life savings and I will "store" it for you.....right. We have mirrored drives and have three archive drives that are updated daily and one is stored off site. No way am I storing anything in Bill's cloud or his ***.

It's for convenience, of cause for not so important, important stuff... that you want to share , and not your "private" collections. Saying that... it still works for me, I guess until they migrate my account too, or I have reached their limits of that 2GB transfer / storage.

they have a warning / notice out on their updated policy.... it's very similar to the desperation of that drug CEO that hype up their patterned life saving drug to 3000 percent ? forgot that name.... it was just on tv some Martin Shkreli guy... PB must have needed $$$ or want to shed some freeloaders, me included...

as far as that running your own... most cable companies blocks/filter mail port and web port 80... even if you use dyndns to work around their changing ip..... It's cost about the same as paying for a cheap hosting....you do gain flexibility though, but gain more pain in security.... you get constant probes / scans hack attempts... and the cost of electric bills, even if you don't mind about doing your own maintenance / security.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Re: Attention GJers-Check your Photobucket accounts

Apparently Photobucket has started locking up access to people's photos unless they pay $399 to restore access. I am posting this here because many people won't see the thread about this issue in the Free Parking section of the forum.

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=364396

There are lots of people here that use Photobucket to host images in GJ threads, so please check your accounts/images. Also, as of now, embedded Photobucket images no longer display in existing GJ threads.

For what it's worth, I am on Photobucket, have been since 2012, and I have had no problem. In fact, I just posted a photo of my latest Flea Market haul in the 2017 Garage Sale, linked here: http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showpost.php?p=6589267&postcount=3760

I've seen other posts with Photobucket notices saying that "3rd Party Hosting" has been temporarily discontinued, but I have no idea what that refers to. All my photos are hosted on Photobucket, and I have no limitations to posting URL links to them here on GJ or on any other internet site.

 

[PelicanPines]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Stuff I'm reading says... 3rd party hosting (needed to post pics here)... is only available with the $399/yr PB account. I read two things that conflict... one says it can only be billed once a year at $399... then I read their wiki that says they offer a $39/MONTH for the same 500 GB plan.

I have several hundred GB over that... so I'm going to stick with my 2TB network drive as always.

I COPY... the images I want to display here onto my Drop Box shared folder. Then grab the link... yada yada...

I actually have to do a special step to COPY the image to drop box as the default is to MOVE.

 

[ihateminimumwage]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

I figured PB was having a hard time as soon as they were listing that you could order prints. Between Adblock and Ghostery, it's insane how much tracking and advertising they have.

Guess I'll be running late to work today. Been scrambling to download everything I don't have saved on the laptop, and hopefully can update links on some threads here so they won't be completely ruined.

This is going to be BAD for a LOT of forum sites...

 

[NUTTSGT]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

This is going to be BAD for a LOT of forum sites...

I thought the same as well.


My first thought was PB got hacked or something. My second thought, since I'm not a FB user, is the possibility they don't want their links showing up on FB any more as that would probably use a metric **** ton of bandwidth.


EDIT: seems like they want to ruin their business. Terms of use; update June 28, 2017

http://photobucket.com/terms

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.


Available Plus Account Plans : 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.

Honestly, I'm not sure why most people would want to use PB if they can't do 3rd party image hosting. Apparently, they didn't learn from IMGUR not allowing photos to be hosted on sites with classifieds and jumping ship.

 

[djkeev]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Yep!
I'm done with them!

No 3rd party photo hosting unless I subscribe to their service!

Nope, ain't happening! too bad, a lot of dead links will be in 1000's of forum from 1000's of users everywhere everywhere!

Idiots!

I wonder if KMart / Sears purchased them? They are experts at destroying healthy businesses!

Dave

 

[Syberia]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

This is going to be BAD for a LOT of forum sites...

Yep, I can't tell you how many times I'll google how to do something on one of my vehicles and I'll get a thread from years ago full of broken images, and it's only going to get worse. My entire teardrop build thread I completed 3 months ago is completely ruined now.

 

[Jaguar Fan]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

he following is copy/pasted from Wikipedia regarding Photobucket:

Photobucket was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures.[6][7]

It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007.

In December 2009, Fox's parent company, News Corp, sold Photobucket to Seattle mobile imaging startup Ontela. Ontela then renamed itself Photobucket Inc. and continues to operate as Photobucket.[8]

In June 2010, Photobucket was named in the Lead411's Hottest Seattle Companies list.[9]
On June 28 2017, Photobucket changed its Terms of Use regarding free accounts and 3rd party hosting(hosting on forums, ebay, etc), Free Accounts can no longer be used for 3rd party hosting[10]

​

Here is there revised Terms of Service:

http://photobucket.com/terms

 

[bigredmf]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Photobucket sucked before and now more so.

Red

 

[Ditch]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Why would anybody trust another party to store any important data? Storage is so cheap these days, it seems irresponsible to give important stuff to somebody you don't know.... send me your life savings and I will "store" it for you.....right. We have mirrored drives and have three archive drives that are updated daily and one is stored off site. No way am I storing anything in Bill's cloud or his ***.

foolishness I guess.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Can someone define "3rd Party Image Hosting" in simple (user's) terms? I am trying to understand what is going on. I have uploaded thousands of images in dozens of folders on PB. Just uploaded several more this morning. So far, I still have access to my folders and images, and I can still copy and paste a link to an image to a website forum (such as GJ, for example). I just uploaded several photos this morning, and I just posted them here on GJ and another site this morning, and it works. That's the extent of my use. I upload photos, I copy and past links to them. What is 3rd Party Hosting relative to this use?

EDIT: Disregard. PB has posted definitions.

 

[ItsNemo]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Just sign up for standard web hosting and use that to host pictures. Costs less than $5/month including a domain at a lot of places and you aren't limited to photos or can't embed or hot link or whatever rules they have these days.

 

[AMCguy]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

OP here. It looks like I'm not alone.

The more I'm learning about this, the more sick I feel for all the people who have lost way more that I just did.

I would imagine photobucket doesn't give a rats *** if they ever get a new customer after this. There must be hundreds of thousands of users out there, maybe millions that can't afford to NOT pay the ransom. photobucket will make more with this despicable act than they would have if they put their site up for sale and got good market value for it.

They don't have any of my memories, just pictures I've shared on the internet. I can afford to let them keep what they have of mine and slowly start over. I'm just a little smarter now.

 

[Bronson]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

I pay $4.99 a month and PB is working normally (slow and frustrating) for me as of now.

 

[Hiball]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Ugh.. 90% of my pictures where hosted under PB, I'd be willing to pay $40-50 a year for the service, but $400 is a wee bit steep IMO. I guess I'll go and save the pictures I don't have currently on my computer and use the forums uploading feature to resurrect some of the more popular threads I have contributed too.

Sigh.

 

[JCQuick]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

well dam guess I need to look at my build thread I have had no notice from PB

 

[Syberia]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

well dam guess I need to look at my build thread I have had no notice from PB

It's fucked

 

[Zeeman]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

 

[mnoeltne]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

I can agree with those who said that you should never have only one copy of your data or photos, even (or maybe especially) in the "cloud". You never know when a company will go belly up or change their policies.

And while this sux overall, looking at it from Photobucket's viewpoint, you have all of these free accounts storing lots of photos, then linking to web sites all over. People at those web sites click on the link and download a copy of the photo to view it. Take this times the hundreds of thousands of users that they have and that takes a LOT of bandwidth. This gets expensive. Every free account user that you sign up costs you more and more money. It can't go on forever. Eventually they either need to convert everyone to a pay account, or shed the "free" users that are costing money.

I'm not defending them exactly, just pointing out that if they kept going the way they had been they likely would have went bankrupt and closed down anyway.

 

[JCQuick]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

It's fucked

Damm sure is I have a 2gb Nikon account its just a little harder to share. At least I have all my pics on hard drives

 

[StolenFox]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

So screwed.... I went to my bimmerforums thread thinking that I could at least open the posts in Edit view so I could write down the photo I.D.'s in order and then identify them so I could rebuild my thread with a different image hosting source. Well, cant do that because when I open the post to edit to see the actual photobucket address in .html all I can see is the stupid "your screwed" avatar from PB instead of the actual written address...

This. *****. Big Time.

S.F.

 

[tarbellb]

Re: Attention GJers-Check your Photobucket accounts

Seems almost like a 3rd party scam...

But regardless, I have had ok luck using www.tinypic.com - free

 

[timbitca]

Re: Attention GJers-Check your Photobucket accounts

So glad I gave up on them a year or so ago. Flickr has been working fine for me, a lot faster load times too.

 

[timbitca]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

GG PB, change your terms without any notice and piss off 90% of your clientele. Sounds like a great way to run a business.

Will be interesting to see where they are at a year from now.

I switched to Flickr about a year ago, if not a bit more. I only had an old (ancient) netbook in the garage, and uploading photo's to PB was gettting to be a PITA with all the ad's they have on their site. Haven't logged back into my PB until today, just went and downloaded all my photo's in case they decide to delete the free accounts or something.

This is going to create so many dead images on the internet.

 

[dwasifar]

Re: Attention GJers-Check your Photobucket accounts

Seems almost like a 3rd party scam...

But regardless, I have had ok luck using www.tinypic.com - free

I thought so too, but apparently it's legit. Pcmag.com is reporting on it.

I host my own images, so I'm not affected. But apparently millions of photobucket images went dark with no warning.

 

[OzarkMan]

Photobucket WTF

So I went to check my threads and see all the pics are gone. Photobucket wants to charge a membership fee to allow 3rd party hosting. Am I missing something??

I looked on their site to find the right tick off box for 3rd party hosting but all I come up with is if I pay $399 a year for their highest level of storage, then they allow 3rd party hosting. The lower membership rates do not include 3rd party hosting. I feel like I'm being hosed.

Aside from all their recent pop up ads, I don't know what other online free photo hosting there is.

 

[duwem]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

Photobucket finally found a way to break the internet.

The number of images and popups as of lately was ourtrageous, even videos with sound poping up while uploading images, very annoying.

I saw the email and thought, well that *****, but it works ok so maybe $9.99 a year or something isn't that bad, when I saw 400 a year, I knew they would be tanked soon because almost no forum user is going to pay that just to put picts on the internet.

 

[aussiek2000]

Re: Photobucket WTF

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=364396

 

[C_F]

Re: Photobucket Just Screwed Me Real Hard

I use Onfinite to host mine, at $1.99 per month. IIRC, I started using it around '05. Normally it's a great site (now and then they have issues, but it's usually resolved in a day or two) & has zero advertisements. However, about 4 years ago, someone hacked their site & I lost about 60% of my photos. To make matters worse, I hadn't backed up many of them previously, so yeah, I know that sickening feeling well.

 

[PelicanPines]

Re: Attention GJers-Check your Photobucket accounts

If it has not nailed you yet... it will.