Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Discussion of non-phpBB related topics with other phpBB.com users.
Forum rules
General Discussion is a bonus forum for discussion of non-phpBB related topics with other phpBB.com users. All site rules apply.
Post Reply
User avatar
hewmac06
Former Team Member
Posts: 847
Joined: Sat Apr 08, 2006 12:04 pm
Location: Bellarine Peninsula, Australia
Name: Hugh

Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by hewmac06 »

Anyone caught out with Photobucket's hijacking of their board's images? They want $399.99 per year. and they'll make your images re-appear - this all out of the blue yesterday.
See: http://photobucket.com/p500/


a message from theImage

There are some useful scripts linked in this post
Last edited by HiFiKabin on Sat Aug 26, 2017 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Info added
User avatar
david63
Registered User
Posts: 20646
Joined: Thu Dec 19, 2002 8:08 am

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by david63 »

Seems clear to me in their T&Cs as to what you can and cannot do.
User avatar
hewmac06
Former Team Member
Posts: 847
Joined: Sat Apr 08, 2006 12:04 pm
Location: Bellarine Peninsula, Australia
Name: Hugh

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by hewmac06 »

Updated on the day!
User avatar
david63
Registered User
Posts: 20646
Joined: Thu Dec 19, 2002 8:08 am

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by david63 »

It's their site so I suppose they can change the rules as when they want.
User avatar
January616
Registered User
Posts: 231
Joined: Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:19 pm
Location: NYC
Name: January

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by January616 »

hewmac06 wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:47 am Anyone caught out with Photobucket's hijacking of their board's images? They want $399.99 per year. and they'll make your images re-appear - this all out of the blue yesterday.
See: http://photobucket.com/p500/
Yes, I was caught and all our events, features of our fun fan site was ruined. Photobucket has always promoted themselves as a free, hotlink allowed site, to share your photos on your website/business and blog for free. They offered a limited amount of space and for a small fee, which I was paying, allowed more bandwidth.

With no notice, they left almost 20,000 images with giant boxes saying you must upgrade to have your pictures shown. It's disgraceful.

We actually had a photobucket representative come to our site 3 years ago (unsolicited) to offer tutorials on how to use photobucket on our site. He posted a few times and answered some of our members quesitons.

So to have this happen is disgusting. Mine's not a business, just a fun, popular site but still.

They have millions of customers, I'm sure this is not the end of it.
Last edited by January616 on Mon Jul 03, 2017 8:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
AlfredoRamos
Recognised Extension Developer
Posts: 1302
Joined: Wed Dec 25, 2013 9:06 pm
Location: /dev/null
Name: Alfredo
Contact:

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by AlfredoRamos »

They have done it before, that's why I stopped using the service a long time ago.
v12mike
Registered User
Posts: 584
Joined: Thu Jul 09, 2015 5:03 pm

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by v12mike »

I have written a script (it is still a bit rough around the edges) to scan the phpBB database, find all the inline image links that point to photobucket and then put these links into new database tables.

I have written another script that reads the new database tables and fetches each image from photobucket for local backup.

I will next modify the camoimageproxy extension so that when a page is loaded with inline images, any that point to photobucket will be redirected to the local copy of the files.

Contact me if you want a copy of the scripts. I don't intend to provide much support, so you probably need to have some level of phpBB programming experience to use them.
User avatar
AmigoJack
Registered User
Posts: 6108
Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2010 11:33 am
Location: グリーン ヒル ゾーン
Contact:

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by AmigoJack »

hewmac06 wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 12:15 pmUpdated on the day!
Then have a look at older versions, i.e. from 2017-06-24 - comparing that version with today I also see someone messed with the formatting.

There are countless alternatives for hosting pictures and most of them don't manipulate the files (and a couple of them even keep the filename). Oh, and don't go to http://tinypic.com/ since they're PhotoBucket as well.

v12mike wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2017 7:46 pma script ... into new database tables ... another script ... fetches each image from photobucket
To make it more versatile I suggest the first script being able to just hand out a list (speak: text file) of all URIs (one per line), so it can be used with any download software.
Stoppen
Registered User
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2012 9:14 pm

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by Stoppen »

Well it's not only donwloading the files. It's also the process of storing them somewhere else and more importantly, changes the links in the posts.

I'm serious, I would pay money for a tool or scripts that can automate this process. Think of the millions of topics that became useless by Photobucket and their ransom crime.
User avatar
AmigoJack
Registered User
Posts: 6108
Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2010 11:33 am
Location: グリーン ヒル ゾーン
Contact:

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by AmigoJack »

Since I'm one administrator at a picture board I already came across situations like these before:
  • picture hosters delete uploads without a given pattern
  • picture hosters cease to exist
  • board members get banned and as a revenge action they deleted their picture hoster galleries/accounts, so linked pictures in our board vanish as well
...and because of this I do backups from time to time by downloading all linked pictures (currently 6 TiB). Restoring them was also done successfully once, which includes:
  • finding the pictures in question in the backup (you need to associate them to the board post, and each picture URI to its filename on disk)
  • uploading the pictures to a different hoster (automated, of course)
  • patching each post by replacing each old picture's URI with the new one (without destroying any optional text in the post)
In your case I'm not sure how to download your pictures at all when they aren't displayed in the first place - maybe even access to your account is needed for that.
v12mike
Registered User
Posts: 584
Joined: Thu Jul 09, 2015 5:03 pm

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by v12mike »

I have uploaded my scripts to extract and download photobucket-hosted in-line images at: https://github.com/v12mike/fetch-external-images

Try these at your own risk.

I have run these scripts on 2 forums, downloading about 20,000 and 15,000 image files.

The scripts create local image files which are named as the md5 of the original url, this allows easy redirection of links without needing extra database accesses at run-time.

On my 2 forums, the local images are now being served with a modified version of the camoimageproxy extension. I intend to upload that after it is tidied up.

The database tables created by these scripts would however allow several other schemes for serving or redirecting the forum image links.
v12mike
Registered User
Posts: 584
Joined: Thu Jul 09, 2015 5:03 pm

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by v12mike »

I have updated the scripts on github, the extraction script now catalogues and downloads all external image files, not just photobucket. The download script now does not follow redirects, and does not save very small files (which are usually failure notices). There are also a couple of bug fixes.
mainevette
Registered User
Posts: 67
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2009 1:30 am
Location: East Waterboro, Maine
Contact:

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by mainevette »

Thanks for uploading the script, it worked like a charm. I was able to successfully download about 1,700 image files - mostly from photobucket.

I'm an amateur at this stuff so it took me a few minutes to figure out the files are downloaded without an extension but I definitely couldn't have done this without your help.

Now it's just a matter of getting these local image files served on my board in place of the old links to photobucket. Looking forward to hearing more about what you came up with for a solution on that.
Stoppen
Registered User
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2012 9:14 pm

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by Stoppen »

Agree, that would be very interesting. Downoading the files to local storage is obviously the first step, but now we have to update the links on our board.
Holger
Registered User
Posts: 1883
Joined: Tue Mar 12, 2002 3:54 pm
Location: Hannover

Re: Images Hijacked by Photobucket?

Post by Holger »

This is why I absolutely encourage my users to upload the images to our servers.
Either the terms and conditions changes or those sites go tits up.

We even have a script (a button that shows up at every post if there are external images) for moderators and admins to click on. That script/button transfers external images to our Servers, updates the post with the new Image location and adds a tiny line below the image showing the original location.
Post Reply

Return to “General Discussion”