Photobucket and Others Restricting Service

Boxer .45

Boxer .45

Joined
Jan 11, 2015
Messages
2,575
Photobucket has started limiting posting to 3rd party sites (forums like this one) to people that have a non-paying account. What this means is if this forum is full of Photobucket images it will soon be a stupid cat in a box suggesting you sign up and pay a fee for membership.

Not happening to you yet? I have seen it for over a week on other sites and just thought someone wasn't paying for their subscription, but I had a free account and it worked fine, but today I got an email telling me it wouldn't be so anymore.


Here's my issue, Photobucket was only charging $9.99 for years now, however, their lag is terrible, always a site maintenance issue, and advertising. To me advertising is the biggest issue, you can't even log on without multiple ads popping up, they are all around the border, Then they have a popup for "Join Photobucket" with about four ads in it...."btw, buy our prints and canvass with your photos. Even if I paid for the service their lag and downtime is often really inconvenient. With all of the issues together I don't trust the paid membership to be any better, in fact I know about ten people from two other forums that dropped their Photobucket accounts for this very reason.

My point is, I won't be using Photobucket for any image hosting.

I also read where another image hosting site is doing similar. So we may be out of luck all the way. <shrug>

Here is an example of a thread I did with multiple pictures.
http://www.bladeforums.com/threads/tops-alrt-edc-fixed-blade.1501548/


I didn't start this thread to dog Photobucket as much as it may sound like, they've offered me a free service for two years, but I don't think that service is worth my money with the hassle. The reason I brought it up was for fair warning as to why the photos may disappear from all of us Photobucket users and maybe other services as well.

If anyone is using a service that is simple enough and preferably no fees, or at least reliable service with fair overall value please share here. STILL that leaves many of us rebuilding broken links. I'm sure forums across the net are obviously having these same issues.
 
I attempted to sign up to see what they would charge because it did say $9.99 yearly. They say no ads, full resolution, etc.....for :eek:$399.00 a year!!!:confused:

:mad:
 
I'm having the same problem
ALL of my 600+ Photobucket pictures in this and 2 other forums vare now blank, impossible to see.
Years worth of posting. I am so angry at them, as if I hadn't had enough with their constant failures and problematic servers, tiresome ads and stubborn pop-ups etc.
I switched to imgur a week ago and so far so good.

Just my $0.02
 
I've paid the $10 annual photobucket fee for a couple of years now.
The result is no advertisements and fast response time. The new log in protocol works fine now too. (The old one was a bit funky.)

I figured I have enough pics there and use it often enough that the fees were justified. TANSTAASFL*. I use it. I pay for it.

*"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". Old school economics term.
 
Imgur is free, I've used them from the beginning with no issues at all, they used to have paid accounts but they got rid of those and went to an ad-based service for all accounts, still way easier and faster than photobucket though.
 
I've had reasonable luck with photobucket for a long time. I've been posting photos on this and other forums with no problems. I've watched other people try to post photos from other sites with problems.

Now in the past few months photobucket has completely reversed- first I was having trouble getting the correct image link from them. Then they started putting up nags. Then they started putting up pop-up ads, lots of them. And their site kept getting slower and slower. Their latest seems to be $9.99/ month for a paid account with a lot of storage, or $2.49/month for ad-free. If their site worked, it might be worth $1/month. But it's not even worth $0.00 right now.
 
I still use photobucket with a free account and I never experience any problems or pop ups on my pc. I haven't checked it out using a mobile device lately, but I do recall it being difficult the last time I tried using it on my phone.
 
I've been using a free Photobucket account for over 10 years with very few problems. I've got over 1,000 photos on there mainly linked on a few different forums and I almost exclusively use the app on my Android phone to upload and get links.

~Chip
 
I've started switching from Photobucket to Imgur. One of the things I love about these forums is that you can see pics of every kind of knife, tool, history, etc. - and what really sucks is that I've got 10+ years of photos on bladeforums, and apparently the links are starting to turn to the third party warning. Some of what I've posted is historical stuff, and I don't feel like going back and re-linking the photos again.

I hope Imgur stays with their current operations. Much better than Photobucket, IMHO.

~Chris
 
Right now, my linked pictures on PhotoBucket are showing up fine on multiple sites.

I have a free account (10GB Storage) and do have quite a few pictures on there but I'm only using 29% of allocated free storage. The ads are annoying but not enough to upgrade.
 
For those that say, "I am not having any problems", just wait.:) I have seen five people just today that had this happen, more all of the time, it seems progressive.
 
Just this morning Photobucket (free account) replaced all my images here with their 'upgrade' warning ... and I only have only used about 2% of my storage with them ... but most of that is for posting on BF.PHOTOBUCKET WANTS UPGRADE.JPG
 
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I've been using Photobucket for years for my forum pictures and postings. Now they're saying I've gotta pay hundreds of dollars to use them as a third party?! What is going on? All of my posts have lost their pictures and come to this image. What are you guys using to upload photos etc.? And what are your thoughts on this? I know I can upload attachments etc but it looks so much cleaner and clearer with a host site link.....

Thanks
 

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I'm with you!

Yes its a free photo site, but I am also swamped with adds and pop-ups with every mouse click. Now they've cancelled 3rd party viewing, you can't even link to the pic as a text address.

Can't put the link in an email either. What BS...

Am gonna have to move to another site, even if it means paying to do so. I want to make sure they know they're losing the advertising at least.

Edit to add:
seems like more and more are jumping on the ransomware trend...
 
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Strange, I've been seeing those around different subforms but none of my pics have been affected.(yet)
 
It's insane. None of their lower tear subscriptions even allow third party links. So it's $400 a year or nothing.....
 
I'm on Flickr, which is part of Yahoo and I think Verizon is buying it over. So far it's free. But you never know when the T & C changes with every deal the company makes (buy, sell, merger, etc.).

The downside is to get the BB link one has to log in with Desktop format. The app won't allow BB link.
 
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I suspect this is some kind of virus or scam as I can't see PB all of a sudden charging 400$ for something they've been giving away all these years.
Has anyone contacted PB?
Do any of you use AdBlock.
AdBlock works great at stopping adds web wide.

Also just curious what operating systems the effected are using?Windows I suspect.
Safari here with no problems.
 
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