An involved email from the bucket today.

What is hard to understand is how it's been going on for so long without payback. I'd be fine with a nominal charge but I just want to know first.

A lot of data.

This is most curious. My 'status' at Photobucket appears to be unchanged. I can still see photos I've posted on PPRuNe, but I can no longer see some others, where, for example, the excellent pictures from Dora-9 have been replaced by the item mentioned earlier in this post.

I have three pictures on this page. I can still see them as originally posted. Are they still there for anyone else?

FOR

Yep, lovely! :ok:

Photobucket
 

Have you been paying PB to upgrade to ad-free? Buy prints or anything?

No - that's the very curious aspect of what seems to be happening here. I've used PB only to host very occasional photo postings to some of the other threads in PPRuNe. I've been grateful for the free service, and I've always found the site to be trouble free and easy to use, but I've never paid for the service in any form....

'Tis a strange business indeed. (I almost feel the tiniest bit guilty)....

FOR

Not for me.

Nope, it seems that the Photobucket ransomware has caught up with you, FOR...:uhoh:

I've been getting more e-mails from Photof*ckwit which I have ignored - it's as though they're getting more and more desperate. Are they in financial difficulty, or just plain greedy?

FOR, when you originally posted on this thread (12th), I could still see your pictures, but not Dora-9's. Now I can't see your either.

I presume that they have been running a process that's been churning through accounts, and as Beags has said, it's caught up with you.

SD

Yes - they've caught up with me by the looks of it ....

I'm not seriously upset for myself that PB have pulled the pin on free hosting - I have other options for publishing my occasional pictures, and they are more useful than PB. I wouldn't even be adverse to paying a reasonable subscription for the ongoing right to use PB as I have up until now. However it looks very much like I'll be up for a minimum of $100 pa, possibly $400 pa; It's not immediately apparent whether this figure is $AUS or $US. Most probably they are $US which translates to some $540 AUS for the full option - a ludicrous amount! Not that it matters - either amount is far in excess of what I can justify. I will just have to walk away from this quite useful option, and limit what I can do in this area in the future.

However I'm very disappointed at what this does to any worthwhile thread in this board which relies on quality pictures published at a size which makes it worth while. Some excellent threads on PPRuNe which exist for photo sharing only are now useless in the historical sense; previous pictures have been replaced by the PB "advertisement". Even if a new low cost (or even free) hosting provider is discovered, it would be a mammoth task to go back and edit every posting to point to the new URL. I suspect that most posters simply wouldn't bother.

Thank you PB, I appreciate what you have offered in the past, and I thank you for that. However you have now priced yourself out of my budget and it looks like the end of the road.....

FOR

If you dont mind a paid hosting solution, SmugMug seem to be very well rated for around $40 a year.