[brian s]

I recently joined Photobucket.com to post photos on AV Forums and thought I was doing ok until I received this e-mail from them.

It has been brought to our attention that you are incorrectly linking content from your Photobucket account around the Web. We would kindly request that you please begin making the appropriate changes to your links as quickly as possible as to avoid any future disruptions to your service. You are incorrectly linking to the Photobucket servers instead of the 'i' for some (or all) of your links off-site.

You will need to go in and manually change all of your links to reflect the 'i' instead of the Photobucket servers. Please see the examples below.

Incorrectly linked files look like this:
http://photobucket.com/albums/aa123/...e/filename.jpg

An example of a correctly linked file should look like this (notice the 'i'):
http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/a...e/filename.jpg

Note: You should copy the Direct Link code from your Photobucket album in order to resolve the issue.

On March 24th, 2008 at 12pm ET, Photobucket will begin disabling all incorrect links. Please begin correcting your links as quickly as possible as to avoid any disruptions to your service. Even if your links are disabled after the March 24th deadline, as soon as you fix them, your files will display as intended again. Please feel free to contact us at mislinking@photobucket.com if you have any questions or concerns. Your promptness and assistance with this matter is greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,

Your Photobucket Support Team

Afterwards I got this.

If you recently received an email from Photobucket titled “You are incorrectly linking from Photobucket” please ignore this message. This email was sent to you in error. We apologize for this inconvenience.

Rest assured that all of the links to your images and videos continue to work. Keeping your media safe and secure, and providing reliable hosting of your photos, images and videos is our primary concern. We thank you for your patience in this matter and your continued support.

The Photobucket Team

My concerns are can they delete any photos I've posted and am I really doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance
Bri

[wellladida]

im guessing rather than them contacting each site youve posted on the links you have used just wouldnt work you would more than likely just get that error sign the one with the page with a cross in.

[krish]

Bri, I always click on the 'IMG Code' box underneath the pic that I've uploaded to my Photobucket gallery
- that automatically copies the exact code to paste in a forum thread here (no need to bother with that 'insert image' thingy) and has the 'i' in it

[brian s]

Originally Posted by krish

Bri, I always click on the 'IMG Code' box underneath the pic that I've uploaded to my Photobucket gallery - that automatically copies the exact code to paste in a forum thread here (no need to bother with that 'insert image' thingy) and has the 'i' in it

Thanks Krish

That's what I've been doing. You've been posting photos for quite a while now so I guess I am doing it correctly.

Cheers
Bri

[krish]

aah ... I only just read their retraction, having skipped it earlier, so it was fine all along and as you said you were doing the same thing as me

If they were to delete accounts/photos I'm sure they'd warn all users well in advance, as has happened with many other free web storage services in the past, including a similar picture gallery service that I used to upload stuff to that was shutting down

[kelvin]

Sounds like they would just stop the "non-i" links from working, not delete any of your images Don't think you have anything to worry about

[brian s]

Krish

Being new to this I was worried I'd been doing it wrong and the first e-mail was correct. I was also alarmed at the thought that they can just delete the photos. It would make some of my posts look very strange indeed. So when the previous service you were using shut down did all your pics disappear?

Regards
Bri

[Reepicheep]

I certainly wouldn't rely on a site like Photobucket to be the only storage/backup location for your photos. Always back them up on a DVD and/or external harddrive

[brian s]

Originally Posted by Reepicheep

I certainly wouldn't rely on a site like Photobucket to be the only storage/backup location for your photos. Always back them up on a DVD and/or external harddrive

I have everything I've posted on my PC as well as on Photobucket. As I say I'm a bit concerned how odd some posts would be without the photo.

Thanks
Bri

[krish]

Originally Posted by brian s

So when the previous service you were using shut down did all your pics disappear?

yes they would have disappeared, but I just did a 'select all & delete' on them and closed the account - they gave about a couple of months notice, but it was no problem as I had them all on CDs anyway

- I didn't really use that service for posting forum pics, but for sharing personal photos