[The_bluester (Paul)]

For anyone who is not aware of the current goings on.

Most people use photobucket purely as a repository of images to link to other pages, something that was always part of the reason for the sites existence, they explicitly approved it, made it easy to do and even provided pre-built links to pop into forum posts or web pages to do so.

A very quietly announced change in June means that only the top tier paid accounts will continue to be able to embed images. Very few people even get an email to say it has or will happen to them, it just happens, otherwise you have to follow a link in an unannounced blog post on the photobucket site to the "Changed" terms of service and find the relevant bit before your eyes glaze over.

Lower cost paid accounts "In good standing" will continue to be able to embed images until the end of next year, free accounts (The vast majority of the sites users) are having the scythe go through them now and what were previously embedded images on literally millions of web pages are now rapidly changing to the image demanding you "Update" your account to enable hotlinking.

If the site had not turned into such a steaming pile of rubbish, littered with embedded ads, pop up ads, pop under ads, browser hijacking ads and apparently even ads with virus/trojan payloads embedded in them you might consider it, except that the only "Plan" that will allow image embedding now costs over $500 AUD yearly, and only that of you pay it up front rather than monthly, when it costs even more.

Prepare for a tsunami of broken blogs, fixit and how to guides and forum build threads. In my case I can not be bothered finding a new host and rebuilding a race car development/build thread I have had going on another forum for a decade, I spent tonight downloading any images I was not sure I had a local copy of then deleting everything including my account.

Fair enough, they have to turn a dollar, but over $500 AUD a year for image hosting!