I just discovered that my Photobucket account no longer allows linking. I’ve used that account since 2006 to post photos on forums. That includes posts here on SDMB. The photos in those old posts will now display a error message.
It’s a total scam. You can’t even download your photos without paying the extortion money.
Some people had foolishly posted hundreds of photos there. A full decade or more of their lives.
Gone. Unless they pay up.
Fortunately I never fell into that trap. I have all my originals on backups. I’ve always been a cynical dude. Never, ever, trust anybody or any company on the Web. That includes these cloud storage services. Someday your files will be ransomed too.
All must bow down to the Nirvana of the Cloud. A total utopian paradise, where some third party “protects” all of your files online somewhere for us, but not to worry, the benevolence of our data masters will save us from any possible catastrophes that prevent us from accessing our precious data! :rainbows & sunshine:
I will occasionally need to post pictures on the SDMB and other boards.
I have a Google drive. I’ve shared files with Friends. That requires giving their email address permission to access the file and I send them a link.
Is there a way to link a image here from Google drive?
I’m also concerned about exposing an entire album to the public. That happened with a change at Photobucket a couple years ago. Linking a photo suddenly gave people access to browsing the entire album. Another nasty and unannounced change by that company.
No, I was saying that I thought from your OP (third and fourth paragraph) that Photobucket was actually holding photos hostage, that you couldn’t even get them back onto a hard drive without paying four hundred bucks. I didn’t get that sense at all from the linked Pit thread. Is that what they’re doing or not?
Yeah they mention sellers that used it for eBay ads. But it also effects everybody else.
I just tried posting a link to a photo in Cafe Society and got that error message. Tried emailing the photo to my phone and got the same error with that demand to sign up.
Anyone with photos on Photobucket has lost them unless they pay up. I’m so thankful that I still have my originals. I only used Photobucket to post images on forums.
IIRC, the Pit thread implied that there was still a way to get your photos out, but the button had just been moved. Not one person on that thread mentions photos actually being held hostage from download. You seem to be the only one. Are you absolutely sure there’s absolutely no way to get the photos out?
I’ve only used it a few times, but imgur is a common site for image uploads, especially for linking from forums (I believe it was founded by Redditors for this purpose). You can also upload albums and maintain some measure of privacy if desired (hidden URLs that are not indexed by search engines). It supports anonymous uploads as well.
I haven’t logged into my Photobucket account in a couple years but I was curious. I just signed in, clicked on a picture, and clicked the button next to the photo that says “Download” and the photo immediately downloaded to my computer.
I also just tested putting a link in this post and it linked to the image just fine.
Yes. I’ve posted stuff here from DB in the past; works fine. It also has the added bonus of being secure, meaning if I give you a link to one picture/document, you can’t necessarily see anything else.
I have a Flikr (Yahoo) account that I usually use to post stuff to the Dope from, but if you back out the last part of the url, you can see other stuff I’ve posted there. To me it’s not that big of a deal as I only use it for public, Dope postings so I don’t care if someone finds another picture that I linked to for a different thread.
:dubious:
