What's new
CK5
Register an account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members.

Photobucket Extortion???

Chief Brody

Chief Brody

"Amity Island Welcomes You"
 Premium
GMOTM Winner
Joined
May 18, 2010
Posts
9,606
Reaction score
1,980
Location
Alabama
Got an email from Photobucket that they are going to block all the photos I have linked to 3rd party sites unless I upgrade to a paid package.

WE NOTICED THAT YOU HAVE BEEN USING
PHOTOBUCKET FOR 3RD PARTY HOSTING*
linking-overage.jpg

PLEASE UPGRADE TO A PLUS 500 PLAN.


Our Terms of Service does not allow 3rd party hosting with your current account level.

UPGRADE NOW


*What is 3rd Party Hosting?
Photobucket defines 3rd party hosting as the action of embedding an image or photo onto another website. For example, using the <img> tag to embed or display a JPEG image from your Photobucket account on another website such as a forum, Etsy, eBay auction listings, a blog, etc. is definitively 3rd party hosting.

Why Photobucket?
Photobucket is the global destination for linking and 3rd party hosting. In Photobucket’s 14-year history, the Company amassed over 100 million registered users, over 15 billion images stored, 2 million daily uploads and 10 billion photos accessed monthly.

Easy to Use – Upload a photo from any device and copy the embed code with one click to host a photo with no development or technical knowledge required

Competitive, fixed pricing Offers the only unlimited 3rd party hosting plan (Commercial and Personal Use)

Are my pictures still safe?
Yes! All your photos are still available by logging into your Photobucket Account. Photobucket has only restricted the ability to view your photos on 3rd party sites.

Can I download my Photos?
Absolutely, at any time. It is an easy four step process:

Step 1. Login to your Photobucket Account

Step 2. Navigate to your library page

Step 3. View a photo and click the download button

Step 4. The picture will be saved to your computer
 
PHOTOBUCKET LAUNCHES UNLIMITED 3RD PARTY HOSTING PLAN
Posted by Photobucket Press+ on Jul 6, 2017 in Press Releases | No Comments
Denver, Colorado (July 6, 2017) One of the world’s leading photo storage and hosting sites has begun notifying its largest commercial scale users that it will now offer an unlimited third party hosting subscription plan.

John Corpus, CEO of Photobucket, said that historically the company “relied heavily on advertising revenue but that major industry-wide changes in the advertising space have greatly impacted Photobucket, including the rise of ad blockers and the Company’s explosion of 3rd party hosting that generates zero revenue.”

“This model is no longer sustainable,” Corpus added.

Corpus noted that seventy-five percent of Photobucket’s costs originate from non-paying users leveraging 3rd party hosting. The majority of the industry has either eliminated 3rd party hosting or imposed variable pricing based on consumption. To address the market, Photobucket has added unlimited hosting to its Plus 500 Subscription plan at a competitive fixed price.

Photobucket modified its Terms of Use in the second quarter of 2017. The Company began notifying non-paying users through email and on-site messaging that the Plus 500 plan offers 3rd Party Hosting for both commercial and personal use requiring no development or technical experience. Photobucket users who elect not to subscribe to the Plus 500 plan are always able to access all of their photos and migrate to alternative solutions if they so desire.

In Photobucket’s 14-year history, the Company has amassed over 100 million registered users, over 15 billion images stored, with 2 million daily uploads and 60 billion photos accessed monthly.

“With all the photos stored and shared, nearly everyone interacts with a Photobucket hosted image on at least one page across the web over a sixty-day period, putting the photo hosting service as a significant part of the internet,” Corpus said.

Corpus said that “initial results for the Company are positive. This path to a more sustainable business model allows us to develop an even more robust product to meet our customers’ needs.”

“We are grateful for our customers’ continued support,” he added.

About Photobucket.

With over 100 million registered users, Photobucket Corporation is the world’s leading dedicated photo sharing service. The Photobucket user community uploads millions of images per day from the web and connected digital devices. Photobucket hosts, preserves and protects photos while bringing members advanced browsing, sharing and editing experiences. Each month Photobucket serves over 60 billion photos to over 3 million websites. Photobucket is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.

For more information about Photobucket, please contact [email protected] or visit us online at www.photobucket.com/faq.

© 2017 Photobucket.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

END
 
So pay up or your forum photos disappear
 
Nothing like holding individual's personal photo's "hostage" and demanding ransom to get them back..
If it was "un-profitable" for them to host photos in the first place,then why did they offer "free" hosting to begin with..
This should be investigated by the Attorney General,IMO...

I'm glad I never used any service like theirs--bad enough I'll likely lose all the photos I've saved in my hard drive when it comes time to upgrade to another computer--I'd rather not "transfer" them in case this second hand computer was hacked at one time,don't want to contaminate the new one...
 
They're not holding your (or my) pictures hostage. They're just going to disable remote linking. All the pics will still be hosted on photobucket and can still be moved anywhere else. Photobucket is going to look like a ghost town soon. For all the rhetoric and bravado on their part the thing that is really unsustainable is their pricing. Nobody is going to pay nearly $400/yr to be able to remote link pictures.
 
Once of the articles about the PB change said their site has literally Billions of photos, it made me wonder if they have reached or are possibly approaching the limit of their manageability. Could this be a way of trimming the fat so that what's left is more easy to patrol (porn, etc) and then later backtrack, plead insanity, and offer a cheaper option for hosting abilities? With millions of accounts you know there will be many thousands that do pay the $400 to sustain them in the interim.
 
It actually makes sense as a business to a certain extent. I mean think back when it started was still MySpace days. It was just about teenage girls putting up prom pictures and shit. Now they've got bloggers and websites that are using it. I mean think of how many guys like greg that have thousands of pictures in threads across how many different forums. All of these are hosted by Photobucket which im guessing costs money, however doesn't directly link back to their site so they get no ad revenue. Like I said I get it from business side, however I don't think they're gonna like the end result.
 
For Google Chrome users wanting to recover photos from Photobucket here is one way to do it without wanting to throw something at the computer.

First off, follow this link to buy an extension to Chrome Link . The cost is $2.00. It's worth it. Follow the prompts to install it to Chrome. Now you can go to the photobucket website to get start getting your photos back. Upon logging back in they will nail you for the ransom on your photos. Choose the $5.99 amount for one month. Once the bastards have the ransom you will end up back on your page with your albums. Here's where the chrome extension will come into play. The PB gods do not want to make it easy to get your photos back. So one might notice there is no button to click to download an entire album at once. You can search the help feature and they will give you a page to see what the button looks like but rest assured, it ain't there. You are left with the only option to open each photo individually and then hit the download button on the image options. Which may be fine if you have only a few photos to save, but if you have many more then this is where the Chrome extension comes in.

With the extension installed you'll see a new icon at the top right of your browser which looks a lot like the Photobucket icon but with a checkmark on it. Click on one of your albums to get into it. You should see a page like this one with a new button on the right hand side that I've circled.
photobucket fix.png

If the downloader button does not show, click on the other icon I have the smaller arrow pointing to in the upper right hand side. It will ask you to reload the page and once it does the button will show up. You can click the download button and let it go. It will download photos in full size in 100 picture groups and download as a zip file. It will download the entire album in a matter of minutes, not hours as it would if you did it individually.

I did run into a problem that the extension will get hung up on. That is video files. If you have any in an album you'll need to download them separately first and then delete those individual files. Basically, if it's not an .img or .jpg file it won't pull it and ends up stalling out on that file. For me it was 22 pics in on an album of 300.

Once you got all your pics back, delete the albums off of photobucket as you go. After all albums are downloaded (don't forget to look at the main bucket and your mobile uploads folder as there may be some in there too) you can proceed to close your account. You want to do this as the monthly fee you paid to get your photos back is a reoccurring thing so you'll get tagged in a month for another fee if you don't close it. In the typical PB sucktastic way they are going to make it hard to do too. You can't just delete the account. If you try, it will pop up a window stating you have to email them at [email protected] to request to cancel/close the account. If you do this outside of business hours you'll get a bot response stating they will contact you back when they open on the next business day. Sons of bitches.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest Posts

Top Bottom