Amazon and eBay images broken by Photobucket's 'ransom demand'
Found on BBC News on Tuesday, 04 July 2017
Denver-based Photobucket is now seeking a $399 (£309) annual fee from those who wish to continue using it for "third-party hosting" and is facing a social media backlash as a consequence.
"People who have used Photobucket for hosting these images successfully for over 10 years are finding that they will have to literally start again with what for some, amounts to a lifetime's work."
Welcome to the cloud. It's not some magical service where everything will be available forever; if the owner decides to shut down its service, your data is gone. If you want to have your images hosted for free, at least keep backups; and if you run a forum, provide the option to store uploaded data on your servers, or you will end up crippled some day. Photobucket has pretty much committed suicide: for that price you can easily host tons of images on your own server, including backups while being in full control of your data.