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[Colin Bishop]

Anyone who has uploaded to Photobucket should still have copies of their pix on their home PCs surely?

Colin

[grendel]

yes but they are sometimes easier to find on photobucket

[ChrisF]

Yes Colin they probably will.

What I'm referring to is losing the link from which you can identify which photo has been used where. Sometimes it can be obvious, e.g. those used in a build but not always.

I for example post lots of individual photos on a number of different subjects and so without a link/file name wouldn't have a clue which photo it was!

As I said I'm no expert so it may not be a problem at all.

[Tug Fanatic]

..................................................I don't use PB but one of my concerns is that due to their disgusting behaviour they go out of business very quickly and close down their servers before folks can access PB and sort out which photos are posted where and on what forums...............................

Can users tell from PB which photo is posted where? That would make partially sorting this out a little less difficult.

I do not see why they will go out of business quickly because of this. They were not getting paid to host the pictures & they still are not. I still suspect that they simply don't want customers who use them to host pictures for use on forums as they never got much advertising income from those users. I don't know what percentage of their users would be at all concerned by this but presumably they do and I guess that it was important in them making their decision. 

[C-3PO]

Can users tell from PB which photo is posted where? That would make partially sorting this out a little less difficult.

No - But Mayhem database knows exactly what images (filenames) have been linked - that's how it can could display them...

C-3PO

[Tug Fanatic]

Does Mayhem need image owners participation to either achieve a recovery (grab the images) or to comply with copyright issues?

[C-3PO]

Does Mayhem need image owners participation to either achieve a recovery or to comply with copyright issues?

Participation yes

[ChrisF]

Can users tell from PB which photo is posted where? That would make partially sorting this out a little less difficult.

I do not see why they will go out of business quickly because of this. They were not getting paid to host the pictures & they still are not. I still suspect that they simply don't want customers who use them to host pictures for use on forums as they never got much advertising income from those users. I don't know what percentage of their users would be at all concerned by this but presumably they do and I guess that it was important in them making their decision.

Like many of their ilk a significant amount of their income is from adverts and is dependant on the number of users.


PB have upset many of their customers, including many who use it for photos for selling on Amazon and EBay and from what I'm reading there is quite a backlash. Therefore number of users could drop dramatically as a result of their actions and reputation going down the pan and hence their revenue from adverts. We shall see.

[Tug Fanatic]

Like many of their ilk a significant amount of their income is from adverts and is dependant on the number of users.


PB have upset many of their customers, including many who use it for photos for selling on Amazon and EBay and from what I'm reading there is quite a backlash. Therefore number of users could drop dramatically as a result of their actions and reputation going down the pan and hence their revenue from adverts. We shall see.

I agree that it appears that they have upset a lot of people and I am sure that there will be a backlash but unless we assume that they are suicide bent presumably they think that there is some logic in what they have done. I guess time will tell if they are right.

[Martin (Admin)]

Just in case Photobucket  decide to do something even more stupid else to compound the issue and until
 the new Mayhem Image server is ready,  you need to grab back your photos from Photobucket :

1. You still own all your photos on Photobucket. 'That's safe! No one can take that away from you.' -  Jim Bowen?

2. Log onto Photobucket, sooner rather than later, download  backup / download your photos to your PC, Laptop, a Hard Drive.
    ( As C3P0 says, this will preserve the photo file names for some dark-side Tech magic later on.... I hope! )

3. Optional, down/upload to another on-line photo site, eg, Flickr, Google, OneDrive, Amazon, Yahoo, ....
     ( Download to your Ipad? Tablet? Phone?  )


Go to Photobucket  and login to your Photobucket  account, ( there are now unprecedented adverts on Photobucket,) login & go make yourself a nice cup of tea... grab a beer! After a few minutes, the ads seem to wane a bit & you can do stuff.
Carefully close as many adverts as you can ( caution, some will trigger pop-ups / pop-unders ads! ) or just ignore them as much you can., you may even have to reload the page a couple of times as the adverts even seem to fight amongst themselves!



Eventually you should get to you 'Last Uploaded images' page.
Click on Library to see a list of your albums...





Select an Album and find the  [Download Album]  link bottom right.
 Click link and save to your computer etc.
 ( again there will be another whole load of Pop-up Ads and maybe even video ads to suffer first... you just have to let them play!  ) 





( I actually hope Photobucket  will have to backtrack somewhat but I'll believe when I see it ...! )   

[Tug Fanatic]

Perhaps this is a good time to remind everyone that you must have a backup of your important photos, documents etc. I know that there are many people on here who know a lot more about computers than I do but I also know a lot of people who completely fail to have any sort of back up and a few who have a back up but don't use it.

If someone does this better than I do please tell us.

Unfortunately the truth of  a computer is that it is a device that has not failed yet. If you have a hard drive failure information might be recoverable but it will be very expensive. If you fall victim to a one of the recent malware type attacks you probably won't get anything back. If you keep your photos on a Photobucket type site anything is possible.

There are many alternative back up solution but the one that I use is an external hard drive like this which is todays deal of the day on Amazon:-
 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Backup-Desktop-External-Integrated/dp/B01IAD5ZC6?tag=hotukdeals062-21

There are smaller & cheaper drives available

Don't keep your external drive connected to your computer (so that a malware type attack + other failures doesn't get both your computer & your back up) but do remember to back up frequently. Personally I have one of those tiny USB sticks permanently in my computer and save anything to it that I save to my hard disk & leave it there until I have backed up my hard drive to my external drive which I do monthly unless it is something like a set of holiday photos which I backup immediately. If very little has happened in the last month I simply add what is on the USB flash drive to the last back up as a separate file and do a full backup next time. This is an example of what I mean & is available in several capacities:-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/USB-Flash-Drives/SanDisk-SDCZ43-128G-GAM46-Ultra-Fit-128-GB-150MB/B01BGTG41W/ref=sr_1_10?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1499757109&sr=1-10&keywords=flash%2Bdrive&th=1


If your hard drive starts making funny noises don't ignore it. Hard drives sometimes give a little (a very little) warning of failure.

[Tug Fanatic]

Anyone who has uploaded to Photobucket should still have copies of their pix on their home PCs surely?

Colin

Is that true? My impression is that some devices, & I guess that phones are probably worst for this, store on the cloud by default and do not have much memory capacity. I do not take  pictures with my phone so I might be talking rubbish.


Without mentioning computer failure I have also known of people who don't transfer their photos to a new computer and then are surprised a couple of years later, when they try & start the old one to give their pictures to the local history group, that the old computer won't start which means that they have lost their pictures. The most upset of these was quoted an awful lot of money to try & recover them & with no guarantee that it would work.

[Colin Bishop]

If people don't bother to take backups and choose to rely upon 'free' cloud services then they are inevitably going to become unstuck at some point.

I have thousands of photos on my PC organised into folders. I never have any problems in finding specific images if I need them. There are two portable hard disk backups, one of which uses different disks alternately and is updated regularly (the other, in a fireproof safe box, less often) plus all important photos such as holiday ones are copied to CD as well. All the backups are stored in separate places around the house and garage well away from the main PC.

Paranoid moi?

Colin

[Tug Fanatic]

,

If people don't bother to take backups and choose to rely upon 'free' cloud services then they are inevitably going to become unstuck at some point.

..........................plus all important photos such as holiday ones are copied to CD as well..................................

Paranoid moi?

Colin

I forgot CD's. Again the history group has had people who put their photos on CD's and then did not look at them for years until asked to do so. In some cases they worked just fine but in others, how they are stored seems important here, they found a CD that they could not read.


Paranoid? Yes but just because you are paranoid does not mean that they are not out to get you (& me).


The History Group is a real eye opener. You would not believe how poorly people can store data/ images either through ignorance, negligence or laziness. Most often ignorance. They were not any better with printed photos. They are stored all over the place in all sorts of conditions and rarely grouped or indexed other than weddings etc which came in an album. Throwing away the negatives was commonplace.

[Colin Bishop]

Yes, I agree that CDs/DVDs are very much second string backups, I will probably replace them with a solid state drive before long.

Obviously the key point is to keep refreshing your backups by making new ones at regular intervals onto suitable media.

Colin

[ChrisF]

I pretty much do as Tug says but Colin that is a good point about keeping another drive in a fireproof safe which I have but don't do.

What I must do is start keeping another off-site.

And Tug, you're right, most phone users automatically have their photos stored in the cloud. I tried that as another backup when travelling abroad but it was so slow due to broadband speeds in hotels etc. it wasn't feasible.

I've also often wondered what will happen to all our digital photos in the future? At least with paper ones boxes are passed on, or were!

More are being taken than ever before but I think only a small percentage will survive.

[Bob K]

I have a LiPo safety bag in which I keep my Will and other key documents in a metal filing cabinet.
I keep my 64Mb USB secondary backup sticks in there too.
My external hard drive has an automatic backup running, but the USB's are my failsafe.

[Mark T]

I too have now received my ransomeware email from photobucket and all of my photos have disappeared from the forum.  Luckily I do have my own copies of all of them so I'll wait to see what the solution is from Martin.  I am unfortunately not very tech aware so most of this discussion is way beyond my understanding.


I do see however the hard work that is happening in the background so thanks for that Martin.  I'm more than happy to also chip in some money to make this happen as I'm sure many others will be too.


Good luck :)
 

[SailorGreg]

I have used Photobucket for nearly all the pictures I have posted here but was advised recently that one of my build logs had lost all its photos.  I have checked and now find that Photobucket have removed access to all the pictures on 3rd party sites (such as MBM) and are now requiring me to pay them $400 a year to get them back!  I guess the same applies to any other members here who have used Photobucket to host their pictures.  If they had asked for $40 I would probably have paid but $400!?!? 

Needless to say I am not about to pay them a penny (or cent).  To change their approach like this is - well, I won't sully this forum with my unexpurgated views.  But that removes much of the value, such as it is, of my logs and I am not sure I can face rehosting all my pictures on a new site and then editing every post to put the new addresses in, so I will probably just post a note at the end of my affected build logs apologising for the lack of visual entertainment. 

Or has anyone found a way around this?

In future I will probably try and put the pictures directly into my posts although I had a bit of difficulty way back when I first joined, hence my use of Photobucket.  A new challenge!

Grrrrr!   

Grumpy Greg

[carlmt]

GG - This has been discussed very recently here:
 
http://www.modelboatmayhem.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,58456.0.html
 
Why not join us in there?  Don't forget to bring a chair and the biscuits 
 
C

[SailorGreg]

Thanks - I'll pop over there and see what others are saying.

[SailorGreg]

And just a little test to see if I can upload direct -

[SailorGreg]

Cracked it!

[Martin (Admin)]

 
 

[Martin (Admin)]

BTW: We are making good progress with our own 'in house' image server.
         It's already up and running.... sort of,  just setting up security, admin.... stuff like that.