A General Warning for all users of Photobucket

[DaveJ98092]

OK, WARNING WARNING! PhotoBucket may have been hacked by hackers looking to worm into your computers. The rumors going around is that for years PhotoBucket has been a good upstanding company but lately MAJOR changes have taken place and like over a weekend a $399 fee has been incurred, like in a lot of RansomWare" demands of late. So going in to Photobucket and downloading ALL of your albums or folders of your pictures, you may open up a can of worms.

I am not an expert on this, just that I am reading a lot of messages over on the ADMIN support section of Proboards.com and it seems 10,000's of people are having issues and a lot of those people are MASS DOWNLOADING what they think are just their pictures.

[DaveJ98092]

-7 ❣ ℒʊ√ ❣ said:
Sadly, yes. That's what I mean.

I'm only going by comments made ~ and common sense. Since 2003, P'Bucket has been a reputable company. The way this was handled and the timing is suspicious.

So if (if being the operative word) the site has been hacked, by downloading any images onto your drive, you may encounter problems.

Again, this is NOT set in concrete, but caution should be taken.

I've read comments that those who made payments did so on a page that was not secure and did not have the "httpS" url but only "http". Not good.

I've stopped using the site and have gone to two others. And I'm not visiting the site until there's proof that all of what is transpiring is indeed by Photobucket's hands. I don't need anything from their site. I have all of my thousands of images. It's the 3rd party hosting that is a major issue for me.

Also reading a lot of Facebook posts on PhotoBucket's page, a lot of people HAVE paid the $399 but their accounts have NOT been released. And now PhotoBucket is NOT responding to ANY emails,texts or messages.

[srx660]

WOW, i went to my photobucket page and got 10 minutes of pop-up ads just trying to look at my pictures. I guess it's time to not even try using PhotoBucket for anything at all.

SRX660

[srx660]

After yesterdays photobucket episode i had, i went looking and the threads that had pictures on them. Many now have a update photobucket user ad up instead of the photo's. Well they now want you to pay for hosting and the price is not cheap, plus they will post links to ads from the pictures.

So i am going to try and find the old pictures and repost them from my pinterest, or my Yahoo Flicker site. Other posters can contact me to repost the pictures from another host for their threads. If the pictures cannot be found or i cannot contact the thread poster, then the thread will be removed(unless there is good word content in the thread, but the photobucket pic's will be removed).

SRX660

[DaveJ98092]

James, that is a HUGE amount of work. Right now another forum is using a FREE host that so far does not seem to be GREEDY, YET.

It is imgbb.com and just as Photobucket, FREE may not always be FREE.

Always save your pictures on a thumb drive USB stick.

[srx660]

I burn my newest stuff i download onto Backup DVD's now. I tried the thumb drives but after loaning a friend a backup of a lot of programs i had saved over the years, i lost about half the programs when the drive decided it was much smaller than when i bought it. Tried some recovery software but without success. Don't know what the friend did but i'm not taking any chances any more.I now have double backups of almost everything i have downloaded since 1990. Still using my COOLEDIT 2000 on my windows 10 laptop. I can record any CD or DVD i play on the computer and it also can be used as a studio recording station. When i get a problem with any file on my backup DVD , i drag out the 2nd DVD that is stored in a closet in a shoebox, and copy the dvd to a new DVD. , then put the old one back in its case and back in the shoebox. I have not lost anything since doing this.

srx660