Something simple - Photobucket error

[Brewster007]

The attached is what I get occasionally when I try to view some members’ photos. I usually visit and use my smartphone or tablet.
Any suggestions?

 

[lasersbee]

PhotoBucket is holding user's pictures on Photobucket
hostage until the user pays some new ridiculous fees.

Jerry

 

[BowtieGuy]

Jerry is right, Photobucket has implemented a new plan for people who use their service for what they call "third party hosting", that is using your photos on forums etc.
They have went from a basically free service to charging $399. per year for sharing your photos.
Most everyone here has went to another photo hosting site such as Imgur. Some members have updated their old photobucket posts, but there is still many old photobucket pics out there that will come up like the one you show in your thumbnail.

 

[ZRaffleticket]

It's as they said above. However, photobucket's developers have no clue how to actually prevent it for people who know what they're doing.

You can get chrome & firefox extensions that circumvent their ransom...

Edit:
Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-hotlink-fix/kegnjbncdcliihbemealioapbifiaedg
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/photobucket-fix/?src=api

Reason I link these two is because the source code is available. There are plenty of other options as well

 

[BowtieGuy]

Thanks for those links, Z. Have you tried either of them out?

 

[Cyparagon]

Hey, it works! Thank you, mister Ticket. I didn't realize it was that easy.

 

[ZRaffleticket]

Yup! These are the extensions I use myself. They work fine

Something makes me think the devs did the filtering this way on purpose... it's definitely possible to reroute the file without using any headers on the request... edit: maybe it isn't so easy now that I've dug through the source code. This same method will likely work with other websites so long as you understand how they filter by request...

For those tech savvy and interested, it adds some javascript to every page. Before any request goes out (link clicked, load image, video, etc), it will inspect its header which holds a lot of details/properties.

If it's a request to photobucket, it will do the following:
-check to see if it's an image being linked to
-if it is, do the following:
--grab the user, and create a link to their full media folder
--find the referer property (what URL the request came from), and replace it with the link to that user's generic media folder

This works because they allow you to view any photos as long as you're navigating their site. There's no hotlinking restrictions within their own domain. So if you pretend you are from their own domain, they give it the OK.

 

[Brewster007]

Thanks for all the info. I guess that means that I will have to browse the forum on my computer instead of my IPad. I will try Google Chrome on my iPad and see if that makes any difference.