photobucket restrictions due to 3rd party hosting

[HotRodTractor]

1 hour ago, Eneto-55 said:

In my case, it isn't.  I have never had a home version, always Pro.  But my main complaints primarily have to do with the way the major updates (going to a new 'build' roll-out) trash a lot of technical configurations and what I call 'clean-up', like removing unwanted clutter in the Start Menu, links to stuff like Edge & XBox, etc.  I do not use OS 10 on my personal computer, but as a system builder I have been forced to switch to OS 10 systems.  My case is somewhat unique, however, because I need to build in a type of security & lock-down that is not generally necessary in other environments.  When I update my system images to a new Build (currently Build 2004), it takes several hours of work to recreate the level of security and clean interface expected for my customers.

 

I know exactly what you speak of. I understand now. I just ignore those items on my personal computer, and corporate IT takes care of them for my work computers. I can understand your frustration as I did do the cleanup on my initial WIn10 Pro install and did it after the first couple of major updates, but then I just stopped doing it because it seemed like wasted time on my own computer. I need to be engineering, not removing junk that Microsoft thinks I need. lol 

[JBNeal]

something that I've noticed about pb's ransomware is that on my Windows laptop, their watermark is obscuring photos they want $$$ for, but on my android tablet, there is no watermark, and on my android phone, sometimes there's a watermark, sometimes the pic is fuzzed out and totally illegible...not sure what is going on there, but no doubt we'll know for sure in a few days

[JBNeal]

I had a little problem with one of my posts that needed attention so out of curiosity I did a quick audit of my photobucket account...sure enough, even more pictures are not even in there, and a few folders are completely missing...so much for photobucket's guarantee to never lose anyone's pictures ever

[JBNeal]

 

So it looks like I found the feature I was looking for...instead of inserting the URL of the gallery picture, I insert an existing attachment...

 

and from the next pop-up window, I can choose Post Attachments or Gallery Images...

from either choice, the window populates with all attachments or images that I have saved to this site, and there is a search engine in this window to assist...

I can now organize pictures in albums and use the search function in the pop-up window

So it looks like I can move forward with getting away from photobucket and moving images onto this site ? 

The next challenge is dealing with memory space allocation...

[JBNeal]

pb must be in need of revenue to boost their quarterly numbers as the attention-getting email I received this morning had the headline  "Do you want to keep your account?" then went on to explain that in keeping with pb's security policies that I need to log in to keep my account "active"...failure to login will restrict my account for my protection...what does THAT mean?!?  So I dug up my password and logged in this morning, and was immediately met with the warning that my account was over limit, then given options on payment plans...looking at my folders, another has been emptied, and another folder is missing.  Them folks really know how to help me make up my mind and move everything to this site (that I make an annual contribution to anyway) 

[Plymouthy Adams]

photobucket is a has been and has been for quite some time....this would border on a scam by todays offerings.  I view them as a hostile "hostage" site....where they survive on threats alone to generate revenue.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Plymouthy Adams

[Los_Control]

Must be at least 7 or 8 years ago I started having issues with photo bucket. I moved all my stuff off the platform.

 

Depending what all @JBNeal has stored there ... seems like a lot. It might be worth setting up a account for 1 year.

Basically pay their ransom fee, then use the time to move your work off the platform.

Chance you may get the lost photos back? You may like it and keep it?

 

I'm just a little confused as to why you are now facing the problem & not years ago. Scratches head

[RobertKB]

I got the same email today as JBNeal. I just opened my account and looked at a few pics. Paid nothing. I think I’m going to copy all of my pictures on PB and put them on my computer for now. Any suggestions of other sites that hosts pictures either free or for little money. Tired of threats from PB. 

[48Dodger]

17 hours ago, Los_Control said:

Basically pay their ransom fee, then use the time to move your work off the platform.

 

Exactly what I did.........

Using Google Photo and USB back-up for the super important pics.

 

48D

Edited August 17, 2021 by 48Dodger

[JBNeal]

Luckily, I have all of the pb pics in organized folders on my laptop, which is backed up to Norton cloud service.  This site has been the only place I have linked pics, so I am more concerned with removing pics from pb and links here going dead similar to what happened earlier.  I'm slowly catching up on summer chores, so I reckon I'll start getting things straightened out sooner than later with these picture files.

 

I'm still kinda concerned what's going to happen with the "inactive" profiles, such as Don Coatney's, et al...he mentioned some time back that he had not seen a bill from them in quite some time, so I wonder if they grandfather in certain accounts or will just demand payment asap otherwise pb will grey out linked pictures on websites or if picture access will determine bandwidth usage that might determine billing priority...I reckon we'll know something by the end of the year...

[JBNeal]

I had a break in my schedule, so I opted to begin the cleanup process on pb by deleting several images in a folder that I never linked anywhere, deleting each pic individually.  Half way through this, the entire folder disappeared, which included pictures that I knew were linked onto this site.  And sure enough, pb has no recycle bin to recover deleted pictures, so that folder is gone for good...however, the linked pictures are still active here (for now).  I've looked on my laptop, android tablet and phone, and am somehow looking at images linked to a pb directory that is no longer available to me...go figure

[P15-D24]

If they are still showing up here you should be able to right click on the image and download it to your local computer. 

[JBNeal]

I was able to set up some albums in this site's gallery, replace linked pb pics with album pics, and delete the corresponding pics on pb.  This pic count reduction got me just under pb's limit for free usage, and this morning I received a different email from pb saying that I was nearing my limit and could upgrade my account...much less ominous tone, less red letter ALL CAPS statements and way more green banners included...real subtle approach, but business is business I reckon 

[JBNeal]

I've been whittling away at replacing pics linked to pb with pics that I've uploaded in albums on this site and subsequently removing those pics from my pb account.  I'm about halfway through the pics on my pb account, and got an email yesterday, back with the ominous tone and red text boxes, reiterating that hosting is not allowed and that I should upgrade asap...in small print, if I opt to not upgrade, I'm being urged to immediately login and stop hosting images.  This might be the first time that these yahoos have explicitly advised against doing the very thing that made me get a gmail account so that I could use pb...so I reckon I appreciate their eventual transparency in this matter

[Eneto-55]

I would never trust a cloud site for anything that was important to me.  I have a friend who told me (some years ago already) that he was gradually scanning all of his important documents, photos, everything, putting it all on the cloud, then shredding the paper copies.  I do have multiple DVDs with photos and other stuff, and a bunch of hard disk drives as well.  I guess I'm just "old school" in this regard.

 

As far as the links for photos on this & other auto sites, it is really disappointing when the photo you really need to see is no longer available - broken link, or the 404 message.

[RobertKB]

I've been getting the BS messages from Photo Bucket. I ignore them but have copied all the pictures onto my computer and thumb drives. I am still keeping all the pictures on PB so they will still appear on this site. If PB closes my account, that's life. I am adding nothing new to PB.

Edited August 24, 2021 by RobertKB
Edit

[JBNeal]

It's taken a few days, but I've set up some albums in the gallery here and populated them with most of the pb pics that I found when I organized the files on my laptop.  My bucket now has 37 images left, taking up a shade over 4 MB, and those pics I was able to get off of The HAMB before them knuckleheads went off the reservation with their wackiness including encrypting images a few years ago.  I think I'm just gonna let them files stew, just to see what happens.  I've also removed about half of my attachments and replaced them with files in the albums so that previews can be seen without the aid of a magnifying glass on the smaller sized files.  This has reduced my attachments down to about 30% of limits.  But I kinda wonder now if there are file quantity and size limitations on the albums in the gallery...I don't plan on flooding any of the albums any time soon with hundreds of pics, but I've got several parallel projects that I've been working on that are nearing completion that I'll be documenting soon, so we'll see how that goes.

 

I've fiddled with this site's features enough that I've got a better understanding on how things work.  This was much easier to do on my laptop as maintaining files is somewhat limited on android devices due to software availability, screen size, etc.

 

It's taken awhile, but I always aim to keep my promises