# Photobucket Is Holding People's Photos For "Ransom"



## msmofet (Jul 8, 2017)

"Photobucket Is Holding People's Photos For "Ransom"
The company is now charging a $400 fee to hot-link images — which will break photos on tons of old websites and blogs."

Read more here >>> https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotop...ource=bbf_enus&utm_term=.yspGB86ZK#.ntLZekRxD


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## Souschef (Jul 8, 2017)

msmofet said:


> "Photobucket Is Holding People's Photos For "Ransom"
> The company is now charging a $400 fee to hot-link images — which will break photos on tons of old websites and blogs."
> 
> Read more here >>> https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotop...ource=bbf_enus&utm_term=.yspGB86ZK#.ntLZekRxD


Including this one. I have seen the odious image on a number of threads


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## Kayelle (Jul 9, 2017)

I for one am really ticked off about this MsM. My entire collection of both food and personal picks are at photobucket and being held ransom. That means that every picture I've ever posted here will Pfffffffttttt........


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## Caslon (Jul 9, 2017)

Sites are probably making a ton of money off their previously free service.  They want some of that $$$, now that they are "established."  They're reeling you in now...with their hook.


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## GotGarlic (Jul 9, 2017)

Kayelle said:


> I for one am really ticked off about this MsM. My entire collection of both food and personal picks are at photobucket and being held ransom. That means that every picture I've ever posted here will Pfffffffttttt........


I would be, too, Kayelle  

The first time something like this happened (anyone remember Geocities?), I decided I would never use one of those services. It's only a matter of time before their needs change and they need to make money from more than advertising. Data storage is much cheaper now than it was when Photobucket started, so people have lots of options now.


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## Just Cooking (Jul 9, 2017)

I guess not being very technical helps me... 

In another food forum I used photobucket and thought it to be a pain.. 
For this forum and for facebook I just download pics into the Windows picture section and upload from there.. 
Perhaps that might not work for other applications but, works perfectly for me where I need it to...

Ross


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## Steve Kroll (Jul 9, 2017)

I have a Photobucket "Plus" account right now, so I guess my links are okay until the end of 2018. But after that, there is absolutely no way I will pay $400 a year for a service that doesn't really provide me with any unique benefit for the money. I can store my photos in plenty of other places. 

By doing this the sneaky way that they did, they've lost the trust of consumers. A more fair business practice might be to let free forums like DC continue to link, and only charge people for links coming from for-profit sites like Amazon and eBay.

I could be wrong, but I predict this will be the final nail in the coffin of Photobucket. I would suggest folks get their photos back now (assuming you don't already have them backed up somewhere) and close your account with them, before you lose everything.


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## roadfix (Jul 9, 2017)

Just Cooking said:


> For this forum and for facebook I just download pics into the Windows picture section and upload from there..




Yes, that would be ideal if all forums worked that way.  Most other forums I belong to require direct links from whichever photo hosting site you're using.    I also use Photobucket and it's also been a hot topic on many forums.


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## GotGarlic (Jul 9, 2017)

Just Cooking said:


> I guess not being very technical helps me...
> 
> In another food forum I used photobucket and thought it to be a pain..
> For this forum and for facebook I just download pics into the Windows picture section and upload from there..
> ...


I'm pretty technical and this is what I do, too [emoji2] Works great for me.


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## GotGarlic (Jul 9, 2017)

Steve Kroll said:


> I have a Photobucket "Plus" account right now, so I guess my links are okay until the end of 2018. But after that, there is absolutely no way I will pay $400 a year for a service that doesn't really provide me with any unique benefit for the money. I can store my photos in plenty of other places.
> 
> By doing this the sneaky way that they did, they've lost the trust of consumers. A more fair business practice might be to let free forums like DC continue to link, and only charge people for links coming from for-profit sites like Amazon and eBay.
> 
> I could be wrong, but I predict this will be the final nail in the coffin of Photobucket. I would suggest folks get their photos back now (assuming you don't already have them backed up somewhere) and close your account with them, before you lose everything.


I think you're right, Steve. This is *terrible* customer service. Anybody with an email address has loads of free storage with their ISP. And Google Photos has some really cool features and a whole lot of storage space.


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## Just Cooking (Jul 9, 2017)

roadfix said:


> Yes, that would be ideal if all forums worked that way.  Most other forums I belong to require direct links from whichever photo hosting site you're using.    I also use Photobucket and it's also been a hot topic on many forums.




I totally understand your point.. That's why I said, "Perhaps that might not work for other applications but, works perfectly for me where I need it to." 

 @ GG... I did something right????   

Ross


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## Kayelle (Jul 9, 2017)

Steve Kroll said:


> I have a Photobucket "Plus" account right now, so I guess my links are okay until the end of 2018. But after that, there is absolutely no way I will pay $400 a year for a service that doesn't really provide me with any unique benefit for the money. I can store my photos in plenty of other places.
> 
> By doing this the sneaky way that they did, they've lost the trust of consumers. *A more fair business practice might be to let free forums like DC continue to link, and only charge people for links coming from for-profit sites like Amazon and eBay.
> Agreeeeee......
> ...



I'm ignorant about how they do it, but the pictures I see that have been downloaded by Photobucket look *far* superior to others. How they do dat?


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## Cheryl J (Jul 9, 2017)

PB has been more than annoying with their ads covering up nearly half the page, and it's been a pain to load anything.  At least for me, but my laptop is getting on in years. 

Fortunately, I have most of the pics I care about backed up, or still on my digital camera and phone. Still though, like Kay mentioned, there's going to be a boatload of broken images here on DC.   If I'm looking up something in particular from a while back, I enjoy seeing the pics that accompany it. I can't imagine more than a very small percentage of PB users that are willing to pay this price to keep using it, with so many other options out there.  PB just signed their own death warrant, IMO.


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## Kayelle (Jul 10, 2017)

Kayelle said:


> I'm ignorant about how they do it, but the pictures I see that have been downloaded by Photobucket look *far* superior to others. How they do dat?



Nobody smarter than me has the answer to this?

How can I get the same quality of pictures I had before with photobucket?

After all the years of having fun posting my food pictures here at DC, it's just depressing they are all gone now. When I'm not depressed over the thought, I'm furious!!


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## skilletlicker (Jul 10, 2017)

Kayelle said:


> Nobody smarter than me has the answer to this?
> 
> *How can I get the same quality of pictures I had before with photobucket?*
> 
> After all the years of having fun posting my food pictures here at DC, it's just depressing they are all gone now. When I'm not depressed over the thought, I'm furious!!



Not smarter than anybody, but I use Imgur.


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## GotGarlic (Jul 10, 2017)

Kayelle said:


> Nobody smarter than me has the answer to this?
> 
> How can I get the same quality of pictures I had before with photobucket?
> 
> After all the years of having fun posting my food pictures here at DC, it's just depressing they are all gone now. When I'm not depressed over the thought, I'm furious!!



I don't really understand the question. Are you looking for another image hosting service? If you have a Gmail account, try Google Photos. It has a lot of fun features. I have my phone set to automatically upload pix I take with it to Google Photos. I'd suggest getting an account just for that purpose if you don't already have one. 

For photos here at DC, I just use the upload function and let the forum host them. That way, they'll always be available as long as the forum exists.


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## Steve Kroll (Jul 10, 2017)

Kayelle said:


> Nobody smarter than me has the answer to this?
> 
> How can I get the same quality of pictures I had before with photobucket?


Hi Kayelle. I don't think the service itself does anything to enhance the quality of the photos. I can look at photos I've uploaded to PB side-by-side with the same photo stored on my backup at home and they are identical.

Perhaps it's because Photobucket stores photos at a higher resolution than if you upload directly to DC that makes them appear to "pop" a little bit more. But I don't know for certain.

Another service I've used (also referenced by *skilletlicker* above) is *Imgur*. It's very comparable to Photobucket, but seems to be a little lighter on ads, at least from what I've observed.


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## RPCookin (Jul 10, 2017)

Kayelle said:


> Nobody smarter than me has the answer to this?
> 
> How can I get the same quality of pictures I had before with photobucket?
> 
> After all the years of having fun posting my food pictures here at DC, it's just depressing they are all gone now. When I'm not depressed over the thought, I'm furious!!



I dropped Photobucket and Flickr years ago.  I went with Smugmug.  I pay an annual fee under $100 and they host my photos in high res, then I can either download or link to them.  I can also set up galleries to sell as stock photos if I want to, but I don't have to.  I can link in any size I want from original to 100x100 pixels.  Example:

150x150:






1024x768:






P.S.  I also store my photos backed up on 3 hard drives.  I only upload when I want to link to a site.


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## CharlieD (Jul 10, 2017)

Thank  G-d my work provides me with my personal drive, not just me. We we can store any information (legal information) we want. Including pictures and videos. For me it is mostly recipes and pictures. 19 TB will less me a lifetime. Of course if I retire or quit, that's another story


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## dragnlaw (Jul 10, 2017)

Colour me confused...   I'm not understanding when someone says they will lose all their pictures when Photobucket drops the trap door.  

How did you get your pictures onto Photobucket in the first place?  

Are they deleted from your phone and/or camera directly you upload them?  Why would you do that?  

All my photo's (and recipes) are stored on my computer and even then I do backups.  

Some of you mention loading directly to this site? How?  (in baby terms, svp)


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## Steve Kroll (Jul 10, 2017)

dragnlaw said:


> Colour me confused...   I'm not understanding when someone says they will lose all their pictures when Photobucket drops the trap door.


I would think most people have backups. But if not, I sure wouldn't trust a 3rd-party company to be the only keeper of your photos or documents. Let's say they go out of business next month or next year. Your photos are then gone forever.

Like a lot of people, I use cloud storage for documents and so on. It's a very convenient way to share files with other devices or people. But it shouldn't be the ONLY copy you have.


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## Andy M. (Jul 10, 2017)

dragnlaw said:


> ...Some of you mention loading directly to this site? How?  (in baby terms, svp)



When you select "Post A Reply" and scroll down, you come to a section called "Manage Attachments".  Click on that.

Select "Choose Files". A new window opens and you can navigate to where your photos are on your computer.  Find the picture you want to upload to DC and select it.  You can select a second photo the same way. Then click on "Upload" and the photos will be loaded into your Reply window.  Add any text and you're done.

There are other ways but I find this the easiest as it doesn't involve any outside photo storage sites.


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## Merlot (Jul 10, 2017)

I was explaining this thread to my non technical boyfriend so I was telling him like if I had my photos of the porkchops I had made on PB and linked to here, you wouldn't be able to see it anymore without paying 400.00 for your membership or whatever... he said for 400.00 you better be able to smell the porkchops lol, I gotta kick out of that!


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## Just Cooking (Jul 10, 2017)

dragnlaw said:


> Colour me confused...   I'm not understanding when someone says they will lose all their pictures when Photobucket drops the trap door.
> 
> How did you get your pictures onto Photobucket in the first place?
> 
> ...




All I know is baby terms...

I hook my phone or camera to my laptop... I have phone and camera software on my laptop... It loads automatically to my Windows "Pictures" location... Load pics from there into post here, simply by clicking on "attachments", choose "browse" and pick a pic from the laptop.....

Ross


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## Kayelle (Jul 10, 2017)

My biggest gripe is that I've been regularly posting food pictures at DC for the last seven years and everyone one of them will now disappear. I wonder how many there actually are? 

I've directly loaded food pictures to Photobucket and then direct linked to a dinner or recipe post on DC, never seeing a need to back food pictures up for any reason.


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## GotGarlic (Jul 10, 2017)

dragnlaw said:


> Colour me confused...   I'm not understanding when someone says they will lose all their pictures when Photobucket drops the trap door.



They mean that pictures in posts on sites like DC will disappear from the posts. So pictures that people have posted in recipes or the dinner thread will be replaced by the one from Photobucket that says you must upgrade in order to link to them from a third-party site (the first party is the poster, the second party is Photobucket and the third party is DC).


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## skilletlicker (Jul 10, 2017)

I don't have a Photobucket account so can't say for sure, but assume you can still log on to your own account and move (download) all your pics to your own hard drive. Understand that if there are VERY many it would be time-consuming to update all those links.

If you're getting a free product on the internet, you are the product. Companies are going to get their money out of you or disappear. Often they will do both.


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## roadfix (Jul 10, 2017)

I use my smartphone or iPad to take my food photos.    And when I'm logged onto DC from one of those devices I can directly attach any of the photos to my posts.


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## Kayelle (Jul 10, 2017)

Kayelle said:


> My biggest gripe is that I've been regularly posting food pictures at DC for the last seven years and everyone one of them will now disappear. *I wonder how many there actually are?
> *
> I've directly loaded food pictures to Photobucket and then direct linked to a dinner or recipe post on DC, never seeing a need to back food pictures up for any reason.



The answer is 235 of my photo's, and countless more from other regular members.


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## Dawgluver (Jul 10, 2017)

roadfix said:


> I use my smartphone or iPad to take my food photos.    And when I'm logged onto DC from one of those devices I can directly attach any of the photos to my posts.




This is what I do too.


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## skilletlicker (Jul 10, 2017)

roadfix said:


> I use my smartphone or iPad to take my food photos.    And when I'm logged onto DC from one of those devices I can directly attach any of the photos to my posts.



Spent the last hour fooling with it on my only mobile device, an Amazon Fire HD, which is also my only digital camera. I'm too old or too stoopid or both.


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## Andy M. (Jul 10, 2017)

skilletlicker said:


> Spent the last hour fooling with it on my only mobile device, an Amazon Fire HD, which is also my only digital camera. I'm too old or too stoopid or both.



See post #22


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## dragnlaw (Jul 10, 2017)

Andy M. said:


> When you select "Post A Reply" and scroll down, you come to a section called "Manage Attachments".  Click on that.



OK...  about to try this...  be prepared and hope I don't crash the site!


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## dragnlaw (Jul 10, 2017)

OMG!!  IT WORKED!!!

I had tried that area once before but obviously didn't get the sequence right! Even this time, thought I had failed, I didn't see the pictures and then I just hit "enter" - it posted and there they were! 

THANK YOU ANDY
THANK YOU ANDY
tHANK YOU  ANDY

OH...  and did I say THANK YOU Andy?


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## dragnlaw (Jul 10, 2017)

Ha Ha!...   Photobucket...  you have sooo lost a client/customer!  It was such a pain waiting for them to open/upload/download/whatever!

and sorry DC - you are about to be inundated with photo\s from this ancient dragon.


OK, I will try to control myself....  somewhat....


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## skilletlicker (Jul 10, 2017)

Thanks, Andy. Actually, I can post pictures that are already on my desktop hard drive. It's getting them from the Amazon Fire to the desktop that only seems to work about half the time.

And posting directly from the tablet requires smaller fingers, better eyesight, and more patience than I have.


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## Andy M. (Jul 10, 2017)

skilletlicker said:


> Thanks, Andy. Actually, I can post pictures that are already on my desktop hard drive. It's getting them from the Amazon Fire to the desktop that only seems to work about half the time...




Now for a word from our sponsor:

We have all Apple products; iPhones, iPad and MacBookAir. Photos synch across devices as I have them set up without any effort on our parts.


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## msmofet (Jul 10, 2017)

Kayelle said:


> My biggest gripe is that I've been regularly posting food pictures at DC for the last seven years and everyone one of them will now disappear. I wonder how many there actually are?
> 
> I've directly loaded food pictures to Photobucket and then direct linked to a dinner or recipe post on DC, never seeing a need to back food pictures up for any reason.



Same with all my recipe/tutorial threads. All pictures are gone. I have all my pictures in folders but it's very upsetting that all that time to post step by step pictures/instructions was wasted. 

If I could edit my posts I would replace the pictures.


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## msmofet (Jul 10, 2017)

I just uploaded this picture to Postimage. Let's see how it works. 





Looks good. Just as good OR better than RansomBucket!!


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## GotGarlic (Jul 11, 2017)

Andy M. said:


> Now for a word from our sponsor:
> 
> We have all Apple products; iPhones, iPad and MacBookAir. Photos synch across devices as I have them set up without any effort on our parts.


Android products do the same thing. I choose not to use that feature because I don't have enough space on my phone and tablet for all the photos I take


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## dragnlaw (Jul 11, 2017)

Well I just got my notification from Phfftbucket today.  I never tried to understand before but I think now I understand how it works.  

When we 'copy' the http on their site and then 'paste' on DC it is actually becomes a link back to them for the visual pic?

so now they will dis-able the link and then our pictures disappear?

They did give me clear instructions to be able to download pictures back directly onto my computer.  All I have to do is choose which ones! LOL  I have all my personal ones, just some others that I had loaded from another source I might want to keep - as I don't have a clue where I originally got them. 

They didn't give me a time frame in which I would have to comply 'or die'.


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## GotGarlic (Jul 11, 2017)

dragnlaw said:


> Well I just got my notification from Phfftbucket today.  I never tried to understand before but I think now I understand how it works.
> 
> When we 'copy' the http on their site and then 'paste' on DC it is actually becomes a link back to them for the visual pic?
> 
> so now they will dis-able the link and then our pictures disappear?



Yes, but they won't just disappear - they'll be replaced with this.


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## Just Cooking (Jul 11, 2017)

Andy M. said:


> When you select "Post A Reply" and scroll down, you come to a section called "Manage Attachments".  Click on that.
> 
> Select "Choose Files". A new window opens and you can navigate to where your photos are on your computer.  Find the picture you want to upload to DC and select it.  You can select a second photo the same way. Then click on "Upload" and the photos will be loaded into your Reply window.  Add any text and you're done.
> 
> There are other ways but I find this the easiest as it doesn't involve any outside photo storage sites.




This is much simpler than my method... I'd never scrolled down to see that was there... Thanks Andy...  

Ross


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## msmofet (Jul 11, 2017)

dragnlaw said:


> Well I just got my notification from Phfftbucket today.  I never tried to understand before but I think now I understand how it works.
> 
> When we 'copy' the http on their site and then 'paste' on DC it is actually becomes a link back to them for the visual pic?
> 
> ...



Where are the PB picture download directions? I didn't see them.


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## Caslon (Jul 12, 2017)

Sounds to me like something was once simple for all, now it isn't.  Didn't anyone see this was coming?


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## Vinylhanger (Jul 12, 2017)

I use tapatalk on my phone.  Just click and post pic.

I have never posted from the computer, as I signed up for DC on tapatalk and can't sign in on the browser now.


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## Vinylhanger (Jul 12, 2017)

They would have been better off letting old photos stay and not letting any new links be formed.  Breaking the Internet was a bad move.  Also, if they charged 9.99 a month I bet millions would pay, just for the convenience.  They didn't think it through very well.  Greed was their only thought.


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## roadfix (Jul 12, 2017)

Yeah, I got one too...

Phukbucket message if you try to link photo.


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