Seen in Print

[Rufus T. Firefly]

More light reading from the library:

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Such an interesting and provocative mind.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Reading is fundamental,

[webenda]

PhotoBucket blocked my pictures from appearing on Model Train Journal unless I paid the ransom they demanded.
I did not care if those old photos were blocked and so did not pay.
It seems, even though they are blocked from viewing here, they are still using up PhotoBucket's bandwidth.
I just received this notice, demanding money to fix their self-imposed problem.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

PhotoBucket blocked my pictures from appearing on Model Train Journal unless I paid the ransom they demanded.

Just move all your stuff to an service that's in the 21st century and close your account.

[webenda]

PhotoBucket blocked my pictures from appearing on Model Train Journal unless I paid the ransom they demanded.

Just move all your stuff to an service that's in the 21st century and close your account.

Your ignorance is apparent Rufus. This post is about a new round of harassment.

Old News
This all started back in June 2017 when the world woke up to find that all their third-party hosted images on Photobucket had been replaced with an error message, the dreaded P500 ‘dial of death’.



The decline in their traffic was immediate and spectacular and from this, they have never recovered.



Which brings us to the current round of emails.

The problem is that Photobucket is lumbered with a huge number of legacy accounts; previous ‘free’ users that refused to pay the ransom demand and have simply abandoned their accounts. Every account takes up space on a server and this costs the company money.

They could try and turn these accounts off but to do so would delete all the images and they have promised, all along, that your images always have been and always will be, safe.

The only way out of this is to encourage people to buy one of their packages and this is where the emails are causing a stir.

First of all, the email headline is designed to scare. From the start of this year, they have sent emails with headlines that say

“[Urgent] Your Account Requires Immediate Attention”.

Not only does this look spammy to anyone with a degree of technical nous but to anyone less technically savvy, this appears threatening.

Inside these emails have been a range of strange and bizarre messages, all of which demand that people take action immediately to upgrade their account but at the same time adding, at the bottom, that;

“If you do not select a new paid plan, you will not be able to add photos to your account and must either delete or download images to meet the free plan limit.”

The problem with this is that anyone who has abandoned their account will simply ignore it. After all, they don’t want to add to their account nor bring their plan within the new ‘free plan limit’.

Why would they?

On the 10th of June they sent an email, which read like this;



It’s interesting to view this with some distance and perspective from the ‘corporate brain fart’ of June 2017. At that time, they demanded $399 a year to restore a previously ‘free’ service to the same level it was.

On June 10th they were asking for just $6.99 a month ($83.88 a year.)

Today I received a new offer, To continue sharing your photos without interruption, you must purchase one of our unlimited hosting plans, starting at $4.72 per month*. (56.64 a year.)



The ‘third party hosting’ elephant in the room has been quietly shifted into the background and now, even on a free package, you can use this facility. Free accounts, however, get a ‘Proudly hosted by Photobucket’ watermark across the image, which is removed the moment you pay for the service.

It is too little, too late for me, I moved to an easier to use free site called flickr a few days after PhotoBucket made the big move of blocking my photos. At the time I was unable to remove my photos from PhotoBucket because PhotoBucket besiged me with advertising blocking my access to the photos. I am not about to go back and see if the advertising barrage is still in effect, I don't care if they are having trouble with my thousands of blocked photos using their bandwidth.*

*Exception: I will check now and see if it is any easier to delete photos from PhotoBucket.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Your ignorance is apparent Rufus. This post is about a new round of harassment.

Not at all. And your assignation of ignorance is misplaced --> You should have seen this coming given their prior behavior.

You should have deleted all of you photos the 1st time around.
You should have closed your account.

You presumed that they would leave you along and all would go well with the world while you walked away.

There's the real ignorance - you failed to address and prevent this knowing all too well it would come back later.

This is a self-inflicted harassment that you could have prevented.

Maybe now you (and others) will learn to actually remove all of your materials from service accounts and then clsoe them instead of just walking away thinking it will never come back later

*Exception: I will check now and see if it is any easier to delete photos from PhotoBucket.

If you can't delete photos (I had no problems doing so - just tedious), just close the account. There is a separate process for doing that and it works.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

...Your ignorance is apparent Rufus. This post is about a new round of harassment....

I found it unfortunate to see you use that word in reference to Rufus. I realize you did not mean "boor" but it is, IMO, a rough word to use just to say a person was "ill-" or "un-" informed sufficiently.

Now, you can tell me to "Bug-off," that I have no "dog in the fight," and that would be okay. It's just that I was disappointed seeing you write that word in this case, Wayne.
Murph

[webenda]

...Your ignorance is apparent Rufus. This post is about a new round of harassment....

I found it unfortunate to see you use that word in reference to Rufus. I realize you did not mean "boor" but it is, IMO, a rough word to use just to say a person was "ill-" or "un-" informed sufficiently.

Now, you can tell me to "Bug-off," that I have no "dog in the fight," and that would be okay. It's just that I was disappointed seeing you write that word in this case, Wayne.
Murph

Your opinions are welcome with me Murph.

None of us can possibly know everything, we lack knowledge about something. Even if only one thing, we are ignorant of that one thing.
Where were you when I tried to delete or cancel my PhotoBucket subscription back in 2017?
Reference: https://youtu.be/DLf_Nlukra0

[webenda]

Your ignorance is apparent Rufus. This post is about a new round of harassment.

Not at all. And your assignation of ignorance is misplaced --> You should have seen this coming given their prior behavior.

You should have deleted all of you photos the 1st time around.
You should have closed your account.

You presumed that they would leave you along and all would go well with the world while you walked away.

There's the real ignorance - you failed to address and prevent this knowing all too well it would come back later.

This is a self-inflicted harassment that you could have prevented.

Maybe now you (and others) will learn to actually remove all of your materials from service accounts and then clsoe them instead of just walking away thinking it will never come back later

*Exception: I will check now and see if it is any easier to delete photos from PhotoBucket.

If you can't delete photos (I had no problems doing so - just tedious), just close the account. There is a separate process for doing that and it works.

Nice response, Rufus, Thank you.

I still think you are ignorant. By that, I don't mean destitute of knowledge or education but lacking knowledge or comprehension of one thing specified in my post, PhotoBucket totally hung up my connection with them by sending an endless stream of advertising when I attempted to delete photos or cancel my subscription back in 2017.

Thanks to your responses today, I gave it another try and had no problem accomplishing the task at all. Thank you for the kick.

Only one thing, I am not out of the PhotoBucket tunnel yet, they put a two-day delay on my cancellation request.

[webenda]

I am not about to go back and see if the advertising barrage is still in effect, I don't care if they are having trouble with my thousands of blocked photos using their bandwidth.*

*Exception: I will check now and see if it is any easier to delete photos from PhotoBucket.

Now those two sentences are contradictory.

I created a Catch 22. If I don't check, I lied in sentence two. But I did go back, which means I lied in sentence one.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

...Your opinions are welcome with me Murph.

None of us can possibly know everything, we lack knowledge about something. Even if only one thing, we are ignorant of that one thing.
Where were you when I tried to delete or cancel my PhotoBucket subscription back in 2017?
Reference: https://youtu.be/DLf_Nlukra0

I don't recall anything about it; perhaps, I paid it no notice. I don't read every posting on the overall forum. So, that would make me ignorant of your travails in that regard.

I also don't know what it is like to live in (on?) a desert (but at least I spelled it correctly, and without using Spell-check !!!)

The list of things about which I am ignorant or uneducated, or undereducated, goes on and on...

I simply felt your use of that word toward Rufus was unworthy of you, as well as unworthy of being directed at him. Hopefully, that will not make me ignorant, too, in your book, sir.

[webenda]

...Your opinions are welcome with me Murph.

None of us can possibly know everything, we lack knowledge about something. Even if only one thing, we are ignorant of that one thing.
Where were you when I tried to delete or cancel my PhotoBucket subscription back in 2017?
Reference: https://youtu.be/DLf_Nlukra0

I don't recall anything about it; perhaps, I paid it no notice. I don't read every posting on the overall forum. So, that would make me ignorant of your travails in that regard.

I also don't know what it is like to live in (on?) a desert (but at least I spelled it correctly, and without using Spell-check !!!)

The list of things about which I am ignorant or uneducated, or undereducated, goes on and on...

I simply felt your use of that word toward Rufus was unworthy of you, as well as unworthy of being directed at him. Hopefully, that will not make me ignorant, too, in your book, sir.

While we are picking on Rufus,



Don't you think his cat has too many eyes?



My cat only has four eyes and she gets along just fine with that number.

[robert.]

What do you call a fish with no eye ?

Ps. i opened several PB accounts under different emails. Then filled each one to the limit. The bitter guy in me said " let them host my photos and waste bandwidth"!

[webenda]

What do you call a fish with no eye ?

A fish.