Photobucket holding everyone's hotlinked images for "ransom" (P500)

[Number Of The Priest]

By now, you may have heard of, or encountered, Photobucket's "ransom" of hotlinked images. In summary, Photobucket ambushed users without warning, suddenly no longer allowing hotlinking images, replacing them with this generic ransom note "speedometer" image:



Understandably, users are outraged.



If you list eBay auctions with your images hotlinked from Photobucket, you might see "speedometers" replacing photos of your items. An auction is useless without photos.

If you're an eBay buyer, you might come across millions of auctions with broken images replaced by "speedometers". Do you dare buy an item without seeing photos of it?

Photobucket goes back to the 2000s. If you want to view a classic user guide written in 2005 on "how to set up your Floyd Rose" and it had Photobucket images to illustrate the procedure, it's likely the guide is now filled with "speedometers" and is useless without photos.

In effect, Photobucket is holding, for ransom, billions of images going back to the 2000s across the entire internet. A huge amount of user content has essentially "vanished" from the web.





Some JCFers are experiencing no service interruptions. All their images are displaying just fine:

http://www.jcfonline.com/threads/153...ully-71-Trella



Myself, I am a high-volume hotlinker. JCF is accustomed to my photo topics where I share many images. None of my images display properly, but instead show dozens of "speedometers":

http://www.jcfonline.com/threads/151...ez-Gio-GRG7221

http://www.jcfonline.com/threads/151...ustom-neckthru

http://www.jcfonline.com/threads/151...s-Gate-Edition

http://www.jcfonline.com/threads/151...70-Iron-Pewter



Users are supposed to be able to "rescue" their images by logging into their accounts to download their images (to reupload elsewhere). I can't even download some of my images; the files don't even display properly when I'm logged in to Photobucket, let alone being able to download the images without them being corrupted! I empathize with this user:





Until Photobucket reverses this decision, I can no longer recommend Photobucket as an image host. There are plenty of other hosts (just Google "free image host" and you'll see them) and I hope they don't follow Photobucket's example of greed and unpleasant surprise.



Further reading:

https://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/30/ph...hosted-images/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/photobu...ransom-demand/

https://www.google.ca/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=...otobucket+p500

[Razor]

I deleted my account a couple of weeks ago. I'll repair links on resurrected threads with my Imgur account, but I'm not going back and fixing them. Photobucket has been crap for a couple of years, and I've slowly migrated all my stuff to Imgur over the past couple of years. So far I really like Imgur.

At least I had backups on all my pictures on three separate hard drives over the years. Anyone who didn't have backups were just playing with fire, and knew it.

Photobucket can rot away to internet oblivion just like MySpace for all I care. Fuggems!!!!

[Number Of The Priest]

I should have been smart and also backed up my photos. However, most of my Photobucket images are guitar-related, and there's nothing I can't replicate (as long as the instrument is still in my collection). This might give me a good excuse to shoot new/better photos and upload them to a different host... and back them up this time.

[Guitarkid8]

I can't believe they weren't making enough from ads. It would take 3-4 tries just to navigate the site without getting pop ups. My pictures display the same image now, and I'll be going elsewhere.

[Nightbat]

I can't believe they weren't making enough from ads. It would take 3-4 tries just to navigate the site without getting pop ups.

Adblockers are killing a lot of income for sites

[shreddermon]

I've recently gotten the threatening emails from PB, too. Clearly, their business model is no longer working, and they've getting desperate enough to alienate many of their users with these extreme moves. Fuck'em. If they don't change their tune, I'll just take my stuff elsewhere.

[toejam]

I log in and can right click on my pics and download them back to my computer if I want to, no problems whatsoever.

Haven't gotten any emails from them, either.

[toejam]

Adblockers are killing a lot of income for sites

I looked at my AdBlock while logged onto PB, and it said it blocked 75 ads!

[Axewielder]

I just sent those PB customer service assholes a whole shit ton of gnarled dick pics. That'll learn 'em! I posted them on PB though. So they prolly just saw speedometers.

[VitaminG]

I deleted my account a couple of weeks ago. I'll repair links on resurrected threads with my Imgur account, but I'm not going back and fixing them. Photobucket has been crap for a couple of years, and I've slowly migrated all my stuff to Imgur over the past couple of years. So far I really like Imgur.

At least I had backups on all my pictures on three separate hard drives over the years. Anyone who didn't have backups were just playing with fire, and knew it.

Photobucket can rot away to internet oblivion just like MySpace for all I care. Fuggems!!!!

I was wondering who else would be good. Might have to check out Imgur

[Aso]

I was wondering who else would be good. Might have to check out Imgur

Imgur blocks third party hosting of images for any site that has a classified section. This site may not have enough traffic to get caught but I know they blocked sevenstring.org

[Razor]

Imgur blocks third party hosting of images for any site that has a classified section. This site may not have enough traffic to get caught but I know they blocked sevenstring.org

I've never seen that on any forum I use, and I'm on quite a few gun forums with classified sections.

[Aso]

I've never seen that on any forum I use, and I'm on quite a few gun forums with classified sections.

Here's the thread over at sevenstring talking about it. http://sevenstring.org/threads/imgur...on-sso.312269/

[dscythe]

imgur has worked for me here.

[jacksonaxes]

My Photobucket links work just fine on all sites.