Old pictures removed

[Mac of Cygnet]

In my annual 'Snowdrops' topic in the Virtual Pub, dating from 2011, all the pics before 2018 have been replaced by a blue rectangle with 'Content not viewable in your region'.  Have all old pics on CWDF been removed, and what has region to do with it?  All the pics were taken by me and uploaded from my computer, not hosted by a third party.

[Alan de Enfield]

9 minutes ago, Mac of Cygnet said:

In my annual 'Snowdrops' topic in the Virtual Pub, dating from 2011, all the pics before 2018 have been replaced by a blue rectangle with 'Content not viewable in your region'.  Have all old pics on CWDF been removed, and what has region to do with it?  All the pics were taken by me and uploaded from my computer, not hosted by a third party.

 

 

Have you got a VPN showing you are in Iran

 

(in case you didn't know they had their internet turned off -"not available in your region")

 

 

 

Alternatively, as I found out last year, each forum member has a personal limit to the total size of their posting history (including pictures)  I had to clear out 100s to be allowed to post anymore.

 

Ask the tech-help what your file allowance is, and is theat that the readon reason your pictures are no longer displayed,

 

Edit as the computer has not learned to spell correctly yeast  yeat yet

Edited January 13 by Alan de Enfield

[Mac of Cygnet]

1 minute ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

Have you got a VPN showing you are in Iran

 

(in case you didn't know they had their internet turned off -"not available in your region")

 

Ha Ha    In fact Google seems to think I'm in Brentford.

[Alan de Enfield]

4 minutes ago, Mac of Cygnet said:

Ha Ha    In fact Google seems to think I'm in Brentford.

 

 

Apparently I'm in Singapore !

 

 

So is the 2nd paragraph any help ?

Edited January 13 by Alan de Enfield

[Cheese]

Are they hosted on Imgur, with links from the forum?  Imgur has been no longer accessible from the UK since September 2025, which would give rise to the message seen.

[MtB]

1 hour ago, Cheese said:

Are they hosted on Imgur, with links from the forum?  Imgur has been no longer accessible from the UK since September 2025, which would give rise to the message seen.

 

No. 

 

From the OP...

 

1 hour ago, Mac of Cygnet said:

All the pics were taken by me and uploaded from my computer, not hosted by a third party.

 

[matty40s]

Bit like Photobucket which stole all the pictures in 2015 unless you paid them a massive ransom fee.

How to kill your business.

[MtB]

Just now, matty40s said:

Bit like Photobucket which stole all the pictures in 2015 unless you paid them a massive ransom fee.

How to kill your business.

 

Surely a business that doesn't charge for its product would be better described as a hobby...

 

 

 

[alias]

1 hour ago, Cheese said:

Are they hosted on Imgur, with links from the forum?  Imgur has been no longer accessible from the UK since September 2025, which would give rise to the message seen.

 

Hovering over the obscured photo reveals an imgur address.

 

If one uses a VPN to appear to be in the US the images reappear.

 

[matty40s]

12 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Surely a business that doesn't charge for its product would be better described as a hobby...

 

Going from free for 10 years to an immediate £399 a year if you wanted to keep your photos and they were shared on blogs was a ridiculous move.

They lost 98% of their users.

At its peak, Photobucket employed 120 people and accounted for 2% of American internet traffic. In 2019, the company employed 10 and ranked approx. 1,500th

I lost many pictures. 

If they had said £5 a month or £50 a year I would have probably gone for it...but to extort and threaten to delete unless you paid a massive fee was just not on.

 

They are now subject to a class action as they are going to use all the photos stored and sell them to AI media companies without permission.

[alias]

At least with imgur there's a mechanism for UK users to recover their personal data:

 

https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=40875106377627

[Chris Lowe]

2 hours ago, matty40s said:

They are now subject to a class action as they are going to use all the photos stored and sell them to AI media companies without permission.

I actually had a paid for account with photobucket, but was still held to ransom, I deleted all my photos and closed the account.

[Mac of Cygnet]

4 hours ago, Cheese said:

Are they hosted on Imgur, with links from the forum?  Imgur has been no longer accessible from the UK since September 2025, which would give rise to the message seen.

That's probably the reason (and thanks to Alias for reproducing my original post)  However, the 2015, 2026, and 2017 pics remain on my computer, although disappeared  from CWDF.

[DHutch]

4 hours ago, alias said:

 

Hovering over the obscured photo reveals an imgur address.

 

Yeah. That'll do it.

 

Save for excepts, we don't delete ant photos uploaded to the forum, and having been proactive in providing inhouse image hosting from early on, we fortunately suffered less than most during the photobucket policy changes,  and also most at all with the latest imgur policy change. 

 

 

6 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Alternatively, as I found out last year, each forum member has a personal limit to the total size of their posting history (including pictures)  I had to clear out 100s to be allowed to post anymore.

Since this occurred a few months ago, the per user caps have been significantly rasied and should not longer be an issue for you Alan, or anyone else.

[Alan de Enfield]

8 minutes ago, DHutch said:

Since this occurred a few months ago, the per user caps have been significantly rasied and should not longer be an issue for you Alan, or anyone else.

 

Its not been an issue since I cleared out a lot of old pictures, and, of course if the allowance has been increased that makes it even better.

[Ange]

4 hours ago, matty40s said:

Going from free for 10 years to an immediate £399 a year if you wanted to keep your photos and they were shared on blogs was a ridiculous move.

They lost 98% of their users.

At its peak, Photobucket employed 120 people and accounted for 2% of American internet traffic. In 2019, the company employed 10 and ranked approx. 1,500th

I lost many pictures. 

If they had said £5 a month or £50 a year I would have probably gone for it...but to extort and threaten to delete unless you paid a massive fee was just not on.

 

They are now subject to a class action as they are going to use all the photos stored and sell them to AI media companies without permission.

^^ this

We lost all our early photos of our canal experience because the cost was unaffordable to us. Like Matty we'd have been willing to pay £5 per month but to go from free to £399 per year was nonsense.

 

[DHutch]

18 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Its not been an issue since I cleared out a lot of old pictures, and, of course if the allowance has been increased that makes it even better.

We doubled it from 1GB to 2GB in October. 

[Chris Lowe]

7 hours ago, DHutch said:

Save for excepts, we don't delete ant photos uploaded to the forum, and having been proactive in providing inhouse image hosting from early on, we fortunately suffered less than most during the photobucket policy changes,  and also most at all with the latest imgur policy change. 

 

Photobucket where a right pain, a forum where I used to be webmaster we had a team of Mods going through the entire forum where we could we would download photobucket hosted images & re upload to our own space, took ages to do., but not doing it would have ruined the forum.

[Mac of Cygnet]

14 hours ago, alias said:

 

Hovering over the obscured photo reveals an imgur address.

 

If one uses a VPN to appear to be in the US the images reappear.

 

Nothing happens when I hover over the blocked photo. Windows 10, Chrome)

[alias]

5 minutes ago, Mac of Cygnet said:

Nothing happens when I hover over the blocked photo. Windows 10, Chrome)

 

Are there any photos on this thread that you can't see on the forum, but you would like copies of because you don't have the originals?

 

If so, let me know which years, and I will see if I can screen grab them for you.

[Alan de Enfield]

28 minutes ago, Mac of Cygnet said:

Nothing happens when I hover over the blocked photo. Windows 10, Chrome)

 

But do you have a VPN which is telling them that you are in the USA ?

 

 

 

[IanM]

14 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

But do you have a VPN which is telling them that you are in the USA ?

 

 

 

 

This isn't meant to be a criticism of @Mac of Cygnet but the fact they said that "All the pics were taken by me and uploaded from my computer, not hosted by a third party." could suggest that their IT knowledge isn't great as obviously the pictures are hosted by a third party, in this case Imgur, and they seem to be confused as the pictures still exist on their computer which they would do as all you do is upload a copy.  They may not know they are using a VPN as a lot of anti-virus and security software come with VPN functionality now.

 

I've known people in the past that think that when you upload something you are moving it to an extension of your computer on the internet.

 

Also it is worth remembering that the cloud is just someone else's computer and to treat it as such.  The Photobucket fiasco and now the Imgur situation reinforces that.

Edited January 14 by IanM

[alias]

1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

But do you have a VPN which is telling them that you are in the USA ?

 

 

Since the link is on the web page downloaded by the browser a VPN would make no difference.  See the bottom left hand corner of this image (while not using a VPN so the pretty picture is blocked):

 

[IanD]

34 minutes ago, alias said:

 

Since the link is on the web page downloaded by the browser a VPN would make no difference.  See the bottom left hand corner of this image (while not using a VPN so the pretty picture is blocked):

 

Huh? This imgur blocking is nothing to do with the location the image is downloaded *from* (the URL you showed), it's to do with where the IP is located that it's downloaded *to* -- if the recipient's IP is in the UK then imgur refuse to source the image for downloading, a non-UK VPN fixes this.

Edited January 14 by IanD

[alias]

15 minutes ago, IanD said:

Huh? This imgur blocking is nothing to do with the location the image is downloaded *from* (the URL you showed), it's to do with where the IP is located that it's downloaded *to* -- if the recipient's IP is in the UK then imgur refuse to source the image for downloading, a non-UK VPN fixes this.

 

Yes I know.  My post was in reply to Alan's suggestion that if Mac wasn't using a VPN he wouldn't be able to see the imgur url.  Hence the screenshot.

Edited January 14 by alias