Photobucket - Please Read

[m2marsh]

Jul 13, 2017 10:40:15 GMT -8 m2marsh said:

Jul 13, 2017 10:34:48 GMT -8 Skidjit said:

Really, this ticks me off. You don't even have the right to delete your own accounts. I wasn't going to delete mine. It's not much of an account but hearing this I think I ought to go try just to see if I can. I think I heard someone earlier once using the word "hostage" referring to photobucket saying that they are holding our accounts hostage. It sounds like it.

I just wrote to them using their Contact Us feature.  I gave them a piece of my mind, and told them I wanted my account deleted IMMEDIATELY.  How dare they not even allow us to delete our account?  I got a robot reply telling me how to delete it myself, but it said if I still couldn't , to reply back.  I did.  Where you are supposed to be able to click Delete Account, there isn't a button.  Just a message saying it will be deleted on 7/8/17. Um....

Just to close the loop on this, I did hear back from them and my account is now gone.

[Tanya]

Guys and Gals... Wow. Thank you for the suggestions but those are not necessary anymore. ALL Photobucket accounts are empty now and all will be deleted. There is a 2-day gap in deletion time for whatever reason. Now I just need to find all my image breaks everywhere. I'm pretty sure my own forum has very few but I do have members who used Photobucket so when those breaks or get that ugly image that so many have all over the place, I'll deal with it then. I'm more concerned with my own images all over the forums I'm part of. Clean up is time-consuming and I feel for those who have much more than I do. Oh and FYIW, I was only teasing about the Reds looking over my forum for me. I only wrote that bit in because of something I read and Scott more or less said the same thing. I didn't want to give them more work so I didn't bring it to their attention.(I dealt with it on my own - took forever lol) I understand how upset people are over this but please learn the difference between a joke/teasing and expectation. I expect nothing from anyone. I do read and am well aware of how busy the Reds are and most of all of you as well. It's a crazy time on the box as well as off it. Try and have a good day everyone. I won't be posting in this thread anymore. I have nothing more to add. xx

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

Tanya , Good luck on your endeavor.

With over 725,000 posts on our forum, I won't be fixing any links in posts. So we'll look a mess. Our Photography threads are really looking bad now, as are so many other threads that are dedicated to images only.

We'll just have to move on from this point. But it's very sad losing our 8 1/2 year image history. Very sad, indeed.

[Tanya]

♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ *hugs* Too bad kindness doesn't resolve this kind of thing. I have a friend who is shutting his own forum down because of something similar to you. I told him not to because I do have a third of those images he lost on my external. I save everything. A bit of a habit lol. I'd have more for him and a few others too but I lost a hard drive two years ago and the rest was on it. He had his forum for 6 years. Lots of memories all around. I honestly doubt Photobucket realizes or even cares what they did or how trusting too many were thinking their images were safe. I think tons of people have learned some very hard lessons lately because of all this.

[Kami]

Honestly, I think the thing that bothers me the most about Photobucket's actions is that they followed the bare minimum of what would be legal.

They did make a blog post on June 26th, saying the TOS was updated on June 20th to disallow hotlinking, but a vast majority of their userbase were not aware of this blog post's existence. Because of this bare minimum effort, plus the fact the services are offered as-is with no liability as per all iterations of their TOS, they're probably totally legally covered.

At best, a lawsuit (whether individual or class action) might establish some case law and set a precedent for what sort of timeframe a company needs to give its users prior to drastically altering their terms of service, but I doubt anyone will see any compensation or even sanctions against Photobucket because of this.

(Again disclaimer that I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice in any manner).

[Joy]

Has anyone found another reliable free host? I still have TinyPic and they used to be lots better. They get hacked 2 or 3 times a year. This is really my only complaint.

[Kami]

Jul 13, 2017 15:51:10 GMT -8 Joy said:

Has anyone found another reliable free host? I still have TinyPic and they used to be lots better. They get hacked 2 or 3 times a year. This is really my only complaint.

The external resources page has a few:
support.proboards.com/thread/594665/external-resources

My concern with tinypic is that they are a subsidiary of Photobucket, so I feel it's probably only a matter of time before their TOS gets updated too.

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

Jul 13, 2017 15:48:26 GMT -8 Kami said:

Honestly, I think the thing that bothers me the most about Photobucket's actions is that they followed the bare minimum of what would be legal.

They did make a blog post on June 26th, saying the TOS was updated on June 20th to disallow hotlinking, but a vast majority of their userbase were not aware of this blog post's existence. Because of this bare minimum effort, plus the fact the services are offered as-is with no liability as per all iterations of their TOS, they're probably totally legally covered.

At best, a lawsuit (whether individual or class action) might establish some case law and set a precedent for what sort of timeframe a company needs to give its users prior to drastically altering their terms of service, but I doubt anyone will see any compensation or even sanctions against Photobucket because of this.

(Again disclaimer that I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice in any manner).

I'm with you, Kami .

As a professional entity, they are held to a higher standard in the eyes of the law. Changing the entire mission of what the company was founded on with little to no notice on a holiday, no less, isn't sufficient.

As someone still getting daily emails from P'Bucket about their services and the products they've now teamed up to sell with outside vendors, that same system could have been used to notify us of this major shift in company policy.

Tanya , thankfully, not having access to my images isn't an issue. They're all safe and sound on external hard drives. I have back ups of backups. I lament the present members and those who have moved on but whose posts are testaments to each and every one of them ~ and now those posts are destroyed by P'Bucket's odious image.  It's our history that will NEVER be recovered.

[Joy]

Thanks for the link.

I totally forgot about that. I have even told others, but it has been long ago. I totally agree with you, unless they realize they just blew up their business with this change. Their ads kept blocking me from logging in for so long that I do not remember passwords. I have them in a different area, so I have to start there. I definitely will start getting photos from TinyPic, before that one disappears. Thanks.

[Tanya]

♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ In that particular case, my friend can understand what you're going through more than I can. I do understand the history lost part of it though on some level. It's tempting to go to my forum and save everyone else's images and also go on those outside of PB that I have full access to and do the same for them. (at least with the image they, themselves, created and for those who placed family images up) Not sure but based on what I've seen, blogs have been hit hardest of all which makes no sense to me since most allow images saved within the blogs themselves.

Anyway, this whole situation is exhausting. I'm off to play a game. Have a wonderful evening. x

[Kami]

Jul 13, 2017 15:57:43 GMT -8 ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ said:

Jul 13, 2017 15:48:26 GMT -8 Kami said:

Honestly, I think the thing that bothers me the most about Photobucket's actions is that they followed the bare minimum of what would be legal.

They did make a blog post on June 26th, saying the TOS was updated on June 20th to disallow hotlinking, but a vast majority of their userbase were not aware of this blog post's existence. Because of this bare minimum effort, plus the fact the services are offered as-is with no liability as per all iterations of their TOS, they're probably totally legally covered.

At best, a lawsuit (whether individual or class action) might establish some case law and set a precedent for what sort of timeframe a company needs to give its users prior to drastically altering their terms of service, but I doubt anyone will see any compensation or even sanctions against Photobucket because of this.

(Again disclaimer that I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice in any manner).

I'm with you, Kami .

As a professional entity, they are held to a higher standard in the eyes of the law. Changing the entire mission of what the company was founded on with little to no notice on a holiday, no less, isn't sufficient.

As someone still getting daily emails from P'Bucket about their services and the products they've now teamed up to sell with outside vendors, that same system could have been used to notify us of this major shift in company policy.

I spoke with a friend who is a lawyer -- though, I reiterate this post is not official legal advice and just the ramblings of a layperson -- and after doing some digging we discovered it was not on the holiday weekend.

The changes themselves actually took place June 20, well before the holiday. They could argue, if brought to court, that users had from that date as well as the date of their first blog post (June 26) to migrate off Photobucket should they have wanted prior to them shutting down the third-party display service. From a legal perspective, it is very unlikely that they did anything wrong, even if questionable from an ethical (not legal ethics, to be clear) standpoint.

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

Jul 13, 2017 16:17:03 GMT -8 Kami said:

I spoke with a friend who is a lawyer -- though, I reiterate this post is not official legal advice and just the ramblings of a layperson -- and after doing some digging we discovered it was not on the holiday weekend.

The changes themselves actually took place June 20, well before the holiday. They could argue, if brought to court, that users had from that date as well as the date of their first blog post (June 26) to migrate off Photobucket should they have wanted prior to them shutting down the third-party display service. From a legal perspective, it is very unlikely that they did anything wrong, even if questionable from an ethical (not legal ethics, to be clear) standpoint.

That would require members to read their blog on a daily basis through the years. Who does that? I've never read it once. And I've been a member since it began.

Since when is a blog post legal notification?

They have a system in place that sends out mass emails to their members. That should have been utilized.

As a former paralegal, I've spoken to a few close lawyer friends. Each has their own take on it. And each slightly different than the other!

[Kami]

Jul 13, 2017 16:34:18 GMT -8 ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ said:

Jul 13, 2017 16:17:03 GMT -8 Kami said:

I spoke with a friend who is a lawyer -- though, I reiterate this post is not official legal advice and just the ramblings of a layperson -- and after doing some digging we discovered it was not on the holiday weekend.

The changes themselves actually took place June 20, well before the holiday. They could argue, if brought to court, that users had from that date as well as the date of their first blog post (June 26) to migrate off Photobucket should they have wanted prior to them shutting down the third-party display service. From a legal perspective, it is very unlikely that they did anything wrong, even if questionable from an ethical (not legal ethics, to be clear) standpoint.

That would require members to read their blog on a daily basis through the years. Who does that? I've never read it once. And I've been a member since it began.

Since when is a blog post legal notification?

They have a system in place that sends out mass emails to their members. That should have been utilized.

As a former paralegal, I've spoken to a few close lawyer friends. Each has their own take on it. And each slightly different than the other!

Yeah I think it really depends on what you're looking at. You'd also have to determine whether or not the blog post was accessible to their users at the time of posting, and so on.

The argument theoretically could be that any updates are posted on the blog, whereas promotional offers are distributed through mass email; or alternatively the expectation could be the onus is on the user to keep abreast of these due to the as-is nature of the agreed-upon TOS; etc etc.

Honestly it's just a mess but tbh I think no matter how you look at it the best we can expect is new caselaw, should this go to trial (if it goes to trial).

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

Kami , hopefully, an investigation by Colorado's AG office, at the very least. But that said, one must move forward because that's all we can do from this point on. It's just ugly out there, on any aspect of the internet, that P'Bucket has touched. 

As far as promotional items through emails, heck, I get reminders that summer is here and time to upload family memories. Or Christmas, or whatever the season. I just got the summer one!

If they can send out those reminders, they can surely send out important ones. I'm well aware of the season and holiday. I'm not well aware of what's going on behind their closed doors!

[Kami]

Jul 13, 2017 16:48:28 GMT -8 ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ said:

Kami , hopefully, an investigation by Colorado's AG office, at the very least. But that said, one must move forward because that's all we can do from this point on. It's just ugly out there, on any aspect of the internet, that P'Bucket has touched.  :(

Hopefully. I do hope that this makes for some precedent setting because while I can appreciate a no-liability / as-is service, a little transparency goes a loooong way.