What to do about Photobucket

[MEATLOAFr]

another pain in the @$$ thing about it:

can't even download my old photos to migrate to a new service, damn adds keep popping up RIGHT as I want to click the album, and it refuses to let me download - just shows the download button, and won't continue to go but the adds will certainly still load in the background

as soon as I get my old photo's off of there i am closing my account with them, which I suggest everyone does

[Tesral]

I'll say it again, never use a "cloud" service as your main data storage. Data not on your computer is not your data.

[MEATLOAFr]

I'll say it again, never use a "cloud" service as your main data storage. Data not on your computer is not your data.

I know, but these photos are old (over 15 years for some), and the drive I had them on crashed and I had almost forgotten about them on Photobucket

I have a more trusted (Amazon Photo) for my personal photos that I have already moved (as a back up) all my files to

[Kremin]

I'll say it again, never use a "cloud" service as your main data storage. Data not on your computer is not your data.

It's not my main storage, my compuuter has all the images and a NAS Drive has a copy it's the irritation of editing several hundred posts to link to somewhere new that in 6 months time may do the same thing

Photobucket can not possibly expect all of the users who post to forums to pay $399 a year so to me they are saying they don't want to host images anymore

[Tesral]

Well they can and obviously are. Now how many people they expect to pay the exorbitant fee is another matter.

I pay less for web hosting and it is more than pictures.

[el gato]

Was Photobucket bought by the same people who own Classmates.com? Because Pb's business model assumes people have not heard of Flickr/Imgur just like CM thinks no one has heard of Facebook

[TonyG2]

Haven't had the "threat" yet but in any event they can go do one. There is nothing on my PH account that I don't have saved in various external hard drives as back up. I only used PB for adding to forums such as AST as I didn't realise you could upload direct.

If there is any justice, PB will loose all its users and die. The idiots who came up with this blackmail will then learn that they do not provide an essential service.

[MEATLOAFr]

took Photobucket 10 days to get me a download link to save my "auto uploaded photos" from an old phone

now can finally delete the account (and that takes 2 days )

[Tesral]

Leave them in the dustbin of internet history.

They are not even good extortionists. That would have been 50 bucks a year, and slowly creep it up, like cable companies. Too much and people will go to the inconvenience of ditching you. Well it was too much.

[Xen]

What bothers me the most is how they give you the impression it's very much your little plot of cyberspace. Not everyone is as wise as the Tesral (or as overly cautious as a Xen). Folks take it on good faith that these companies will treat them well and end up burned.

A bigger problem (IMO) is with FB and G that offer a place for groups to share. If push comes to shove, rules change, or a takeover happens, would they make years worth of data / IP (stories, pics etc) available to the respective owners?

Re: AST uploads, I thought I had increased the file size a couple of years ago (before the health issues made me a lurker). Feel free to play around and see what the limit is.

AST was always meant to be as much a compendium of information and eye candy as it is a little friendly Trek community. That's why no threads get deleted.

I wish folks good luck with their data recovery and (unashamedly) hope they can replace some - all of the pics they linked here.