Photobucket users be careful! ALL your personal photos might be on display.

[VaniB]

I have been using the Photobucket Image Hosting websight for years. It is fast, simple, and convenient means for posting your photos, or copying images off of the internet, and posting the images in virtually any forum. Photos and images can be resized, edited for color, adjusted for contrast and brightness, etc. It's a very fine tool offered free of charge.....HOWEVER;

Yesterday, I was looking at some photos posted by a few members on a thread that I had started ( "Are you one who doesn't post photos of what you are selling? " ) By chance and totally unexpectedly, all of the sudden I found myself forwarded into these member's Photobucket homepage and able to view their entire library of personal photos they had stored there. Most Photobucket members don't realize that when they post a single chosen photo or internet image onto a thread, they are leaving their door wide open for anybody to view ALL their photos. No, I didn't actually proceed to look through their personal photos. I felt very embarrassed about finding myself there and got the heck out of their library real quick!! I then proceeded to PM and contact the effected members to try to reach them and inform them of this potential invasion of privacy. I also immediately contacted the administrator here, explained the situation, and requested that he delete the entire thread because a couple of the effected members were off line and vulnerable to intrusion while they couldn't be reached. The administrator obliged, and the thread was soon deleted. As a curiosity to find out just how widespread this problem is, I then proceeded to randomly dig up any old archive threads (about any topic posted by anybody) and check them out for this problem. Lo-and-behold I found other members whose photobucket homepage and libraries, of which I was able to do the same thing.

This is NOT a glitch with photobucket. For some odd reason, photobucket must think that this feature is just fine and dandy and they have chosen to make it an automatic default with their websight!!! They do NOT seem to understand that most folks aren't aware that all of their personal photos will be on display to the entire world, and not just the one photo that they chose to post. I will NOT divulge openly here the method of how I was able to gain access to the other member's photobucket homepage libraries, as I don't want to be instructing folks how to do this so they can then be abusing everybody else's privacy. And if you are aware of this and you know how to do it, please don't post the info here in conversation. (in fact, don't post it anywhere!......please keep it a secret to yourself.)

Don't panic. (like I first did. LOL) There is no reason to delete your entire Photobucket album. JUST BE SURE TO USE THE PRIVACY OPTION, (as I will describe below.) While I was in the middle of checking out this problem and contacting the members and the administrator about it last night, our good forum member here, raythemanroe, PM'd me to tell me that he researched the websight to discover the remedy; If you are a photobucket member, BE SURE TO CLICK ON THE LITTLE KEY ICON IN THE UPPER LEFT CORNER OF YOUR "BUCKET" PAGE. THIS LOGO IS FOUND JUST TO THE RIGHT OF "YOUR BUCKET". This will make your library of images/photos private so no nobody can intrude. Or as I later discovered during my own research, you can click on the user settings located underneath your user name, and then click into the privacy tab where you will be given the option to lock your album.

 

[spclark]

The longer the Internet's around, the more we're discovering just how much there is "behind the curtain" with each passing day.

Keep in mind too that what you think you know to be true about something there today might not be true tomorrow....

It's a work-in-progress after all.

 

[BaconFat]

If you want to keep something private in the first place, don't upload it to the internet. The way people share stuff via social media sites amazes me.

I don't think people care who looks at their pictures. On another forum that I'm a member of, what you describes happens all the time and

nobody cares or worries about it.

It was good of you to bring this to peoples attention so they can fix the issue if they want.

 

[bugman]

You are absolutely correct. I followed your directions, and my settings were configured to the default/share option. Very surprising since I have used this service for at least 5 years, and was never once informed of this sharing default or any method to choose a privacy setting.

After changing the privacy default, I contacted photobucket to record my concern and disapproval. I would be very surprised if that made any difference, but it made me feel better.

Thank you for posting this.

Jack

 

[JayCutright]

I have always used my real name on forums. I think it'd be better if we all do it. I google my name every now and then to see whats being said about me.
One day I googled my name and found my photo bucket album in full view. Every pic I ever put on it was there. I didn't have anything to be ashamed of but it got my attention.

 

[Forum Boss]

I would like to remind people that, if they simply resize their images first, the images can be hosted as attachments to a Forum post -- no third party host is required.

There are many free image editors. Irfanview is one we use for Windows computers.

Suggest you resize to 600 pixels wide, then save at 94% (or "high") quality jpeg. That will almost assuredly get you under our limits.

The attached JPEG is 600 pixels wide, was saved at 95%, and ended up at 74kb, less than half of our max size.

 

[RandyB]

Thank you Sir for the warning.

 

[stubbicatt]

Thanks man. Made some changes to settings.