The 'E' Type Forum

A member has alerted me to the fact Photobucket have changed their T&C's and now prohibit posting to third party sites (i.e. Forums) unless you pay them $399.99 per year to be allowed to do so. Although all your photos will be retained in your library they will no longer display on the Forum. This is a complete nightmare for us as the majority of our photos are hosted there so Factory Fit, Collectors Corner and thousands of other threads are going to be rendered useless. All that will be displayed is a clock showing 100% and an invitation to purchase the exorbitant plan.

Going forward I suggest you use either the Postimage host link at the bottom of the editor page or sign up for one of the images to get sites such as imgur.

This is the worst case of ransomware I have ever come across and I can't fathom what Photobucket management are thinking about other than commercial suicide. I suggest you download any valuable images to Google Drive or your PC as a precaution and look to upload them elsewhere. A complaint to Photobucket would not go amiss - they did not even give any warning of the change. I will continue to monitor the situation and keep this thread up to date. You can do a Google search to find out more but more than likely you will be receiving an email telling you to put your hands up and hand over your money.

I am away at the moment but will continue to monitor the situation but I can't do anything until I am back at my desk.

Hi David.....noticed an hour or so ago that one of our members avater had changed to the 100% clock you mention see last entry for Jeremy viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1408&start=1240

Best practice is not to click on any links if you get the email and when you go into your PB account do not click on the "Do you link images?" green box. Sign up for imgur, it is free and very well liked.

David,
Is this linked to how much people use Photobucket ?
I don't put anything up on "Clouds" and only signed up and used Photobucket specifically for this forum, so my "account" allowance is hardly used with the number of photos I have on there.
Just wondered if people with minimal use of the our individual allowance remain in the clear or out of Photobucket's radar, compared to some people or groups with a high use of such a facility who have now been collared ?
Regards,
Dave

'Twas I who alerted David as not only my Avatar but every one of the photos I've posted have been replaced by the clock thing. There was no warning whatsoever, just removal and the demand for an astonishing amount of money.
I have no idea what criteria PB are applying. Of my 2GB free storage allowance I am using 2%. I've used PB ONLY for the purpose of posting pics on this Forum.

Blimey..... i set my account up just for this forum.

Just been dipping at random into the forum for the last 10 mins and haven't seen any other censored photos or avatars....Maybe I alone have been specially selected by PB for this honour?

Hi,
Nope, afraid not. Mine are gone too. Tried to login to photobucket but got spams telling me I had won an iPhone 7. Currently in process of closing my photobucket account. Sorry if you are looking for any of my photos.

Simon

Suggest you sign up for imgur which gets rave reviews from everyone and it is the place most people seem to be fleeing to. Your PB photos will remain in their library so they are deleting nothing. Photos will show up in the Forum at the moment because they have been cached to your device. If anyone fancies clearing their browser cache and reporting how any photos are affected it would be useful. This is affecting Forums, small businesses and eBay sellers around the world so we can only hope it will put so much pressure on PB they will change their minds.

You can test things out by uploading a new photo to PB and posting on this thread. You could also try posting one of your old photos from PB.

Don't close your PB account until you have downloaded all you photos to your PC - there is a function in PB to easily do that on bulk. You can then replace the photos into imgur ( pronounced imager) as and when required.

I just created and uploaded this , OK so far.
I have only used 2% of my allowance so maybe i'm not on their radar yet.

Imgur set up .....

In my opinion, even for a free service, photobucket is crap. The fact that you need either a popup blocker, or to click 5 (yes five) thingies away just to look at their terms of service says they're not really interested in anything other than (desperately) trying to sell you something or another.

Google images isn't all that good either, but it's problems are only that it wasn't designed to be as useful as the picasa service which it replaced.

@red kite: they may be tracking hitrate over time and only trapping calls above a certain level, or it may be that their resources simply can't process and block all incoming requests which appear to be Third party hosted.

It's probably only a question of time until forum software developers figure out how to make a request to photobucket look like an innocent browser request.

Off topic for a moment, but Gerry, I have to say that is one gorgeous car you have. The rear 3/4 angle is the best view of an fhc in my book - it's what you see when one overtakes you....

I am puzzled about this because my photobucket account ( very small - about 2% of storage used ) appears unaffected, and there is absolutely no mention on the site itself of new Terms ( and the definitions are not given of "linking images" and "3rd party images" etc). I am wondering whether there has been a hack of photobucket so as to produce this clockface which does purport to give definitions

If it is not some sort of spoof, who but an idiot would pay$400US for this sort of service? The whole thing will go belly up in no time

PS Whether it's a spoof or not, I have deleted my account, which like that of another poster, was only set up for this forum

PPS Following David's instructions, I've just gone back to photobucket to reinstate it , and the account is still there with the full library of pics. When I deleted, it did say I had 48 hours to change my mind, but there is no mention of that now. I still wonder whether the whole thing -including the purportedly altered Terms - has been a hack to try and con people out of money

I've not had any such messages either. Hard to believe that any organisation that wants to succeed would suddenly request such funds. Commercial insanity. Has photobucket itself confirmed that it sent these requests?

Its definatly from photobucket..here is there revised t&c june 28 2017 http://photobucket.com/terms 3rd party imaging only on there plan 500

Seems it is indeed so. Various sites are discussing it.
http://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/30/photob ... ed-images/

Please DO NOT delete your PB account as it will leave holes all over the Forum. The service is free and your photos will be stored no matter what. It is highly likely only those photos viewed many times will be compromised so old posts will never appear on their radar. You may however want to change your Forum Avatar if it is hosted on PB and upload it to the Forum database instead. You can do that from your UCP. Alternatively use imgur or Postimage to host the avatar.

With all the bad press PB are getting they may well reverse their stance although I will certainly only use imgur or the Forum linked Postimage (small blue P logo at the bottom left of the post editor).

Just trying out the forum "postimage"

I click on the "p", then click "Choose images", but nothing happens? Should "choose image" allow me to browse the images on my PC?

Seems alright to me