You may have noticed over the past day or two that some of the images that I have previously posted on this forum over the last 8 years
(including my Avatar) have
(had) been replaced with this unexpected ransom demand:
It would appear that recent changes in Photobucket's Terms of Service no longer allows me to embed images that I have previously uploaded to Photobucket on any other website except for photobucket.com, and that includes this and other forums that I have posted on over the last 8 years!
Photobucket have always actively promoted this type of use, but they neglected to mention that I would eventually need to pay $399 per year to continue using this particular function!
WE NOTICED THAT YOU HAVE BEEN USING
PHOTOBUCKET FOR 3RD PARTY HOSTING*
TO RESTORE YOUR 3RD PARTY HOSTED IMAGES,
PLEASE UPGRADE TO A PLUS 500 PLAN. Which only costs $399 a year 
Our Terms of Service does not allow 3rd party hosting with your current account level.
*What is 3rd Party Hosting?
Photobucket defines 3rd party hosting as the action of embedding an image or photo onto another website. For example, using the <img> tag to embed or display a JPEG image from your Photobucket account on another website such as a forum, Etsy, eBay auction listings, a blog, etc. is definitively 3rd party hosting.
The good news is that I have downloaded
all of my photos
(and a couple of videos) from Photobucket and uploaded them to another server, and I'm now in the process of changing the URLs in the image links
(on all of my posts containing blocked images) to the other server so they can be seen again on the forum.
I have already edited 100's of my posts, but it is very time consuming and I still have a lot more to correct, but I absolutely refuse to be bullied into paying money to a company whose low level tactics are
(in my opinion) no different to those used by drug dealers.
In the meantime
(unless Photobucket realises how much of a big mistake it has made and unblocks the images) you should be able to right click on the ransom demands and open the image in a new tab
(dependant upon which browser you are using) to see the photos on Photobucket.com.
Most of you will probably have realised that I am a great believer in using pictures and diagrams to explain things more easily, but my images are useless if you can't see them.
Although pictures are said to be "worth a thousand words", the 980 pictures
(126.49MB of my free 2GB storage) that I have uploaded to Photobucket over the last 8 years are definitely not worth paying $399
every year!
8 years @ $399 per year = $3192
$3192 / 980 pictures = $3.26 per picture.
Alan 
