Photobucket cancels free hosting

[Zeedman]

This was effective June 28th, with no prior notice. Now all of the photos I've posted online for over 10 years have been disabled... unless I agree to pay $100.00 a year to restore them. While they have the right to make whatever changes they wish to a free service, to do so retroactively - and to cancel links previously made in good faith - is basically extortion. Guess I'll be shopping for another provider - any recommendations?

 

[thistlebloom]

Just my opinion, but I see all the cloud storage providers following suit in the near future.

 

[Beekissed]

This was effective June 28th, with no prior notice. Now all of the photos I've posted online for over 10 years have been disabled... unless I agree to pay $100.00 a year to restore them. While they have the right to make whatever changes they wish to a free service, to do so retroactively - and to cancel links previously made in good faith - is basically extortion. Guess I'll be shopping for another provider - any recommendations?

That's horrible!!! I hate to lose access to my pictures but have done so a few times when computers died and I didn't have those files backed up.

That's downright crooked, if you ask me...and they know people will pay it because pictures are sort of a piece of your family and leaving them behind is like leaving your family and memories behind. That's why those photographers who do family photos take so many extra poses and develop them...they know you can't bear leaving pics of your kids behind.

Now I just copy my pics to the BYC sites and FB, in hopes that if one goes down, the other will still have them.

 

[Zeedman]

All of the photos I uploaded to PB are not lost; I still have access to them. It is the 10 years worth of links that was lost. To suddenly disallow all those links, and demand money to restore access to your own photos, makes them no different than ransomware. It is beyond disreputable, and I hope they pay dearly for the way they have abused their (former) clients.

 

[journey11]

They do print services and I have bought canvas prints off of them before. It's not like they aren't making their money on it.

This cripples a few posts on my blog, thankfully not all. And here as well. I think it is really dirty that they disabled pics from prior to their cut-off date. How on earth is a person to go back through and re-upload them elsewhere and fix all the damage? I've linked many pics on here over the years. It was quicker and easier than uploading them here at the time. I've had 5 different photo storage accounts over the years. PB was my favorite for sharing. Some others have been better for backup. I use Shutterfly for prints as I like their service best, but you can't link from there, only through Facebook and other social media. No use for forums.

 

[journey11]

Sorry for the de-rail...cutting and pasting this to here:

You may want to consider moving to Flickr. You get 1TB of space free. Or Google photos, which is unlimited I think. I like that Google automatically uploads them right off of my phone too (Android). I just downloaded the Flickr app and it has a auto-uploader too. Flickr runs through Yahoo, links to that account if you already have one for email.

I have trouble with the the insert image function on here. It won't accept the link generated by the share function on any of these services, but if I click on the pic to make it large and then right click and select "copy image location", it will insert it then. It is a different link for some reason. I have not been so computer savvy anymore since I upgraded from Vista and went on to use tablets and smartphones. It takes me awhile to figure these things out sometimes.

 

[digitS']

Google changed url's (or something) several years ago so that all my previous image links, on this and other forums, no longer showed a picture. That was frustrating! I got the idea that it was something that was intended as an improvement but Google is not so "friendly" with sharing as it was some years back.

Those soybeans in the garden pictures ~ interestingly ~ are with Tinypic. Tinypic is owned by Photobucket. It doesn't really have a gallery. I don't know when PB might kneecap Tinypic. And, that's the thing ...

The gallery here on TEG has been good to me but finding the old pre-format change TEG gallery to use the links seems to now be impossible.

Steve

 

[Zeedman]

I think it is really dirty that they disabled pics from prior to their cut-off date. How on earth is a person to go back through and re-upload them elsewhere and fix all the damage?

That's the problem, and the reason this basically amounts to extortion: the damage can't be undone. I can't go back & edit all of those posts to change the links, most of them are "fixed in stone" at this point.

PB could have made this transition more user-friendly, and left existing links in place... but apparently was uninterested in being "friendly". Had they been nicer about it - and not tried to strong-arm their users from $0 to $100 in one shot - I might even have paid to stay with them. That's off the table now.

I'll look into Flickr, but if it runs through Yahoo, that could just lead to another issue down the line. I currently get my mail via Yahoo, and recently received a notification from them that their terms of service are changing. It appears that I deleted that email (oops!) but I believe they are changing ownership.

I'm also looking into an off-line system to archive all of my old emails, which are records of past trades & correspondence. I don't want them all getting lost too, because some inept bean counter decides to change the system. I've gotta say, all the website shake-ups (which also includes recent changes to Gardenweb & SSE) are really getting under my skin.

 

[digitS']

Photobucket Breaks Image Links Across the Internet (PC magazine click)

PB alternatives (Ghack click)

Steve

 

[aftermidnight]

I have never used Photo Bucket or any of the other photo sights. I use a Mac laptop and my photo album is stored here. Hubby keeps telling me there is a much easier way to do this BUT why fix it if it's not broken .
I open up my photo album, select what photo's I want, drag them onto my desktop, from there I drag and drop into my message. I then have the option of thumbnail or full image. Hubby has me well backed up in case I screw up, I'm happy to say I haven't done in a long time but there's always the possibility .

Annette