absolutely I have been trying to let people know about those changes in photobucket, in my opinion they are not changes for the better. Some people do want to share publicly and that is fine but I personally want my pics and albums shown only to the individuals I provide them to.

The other thing is they now make it difficult to find where to change settings it should be an easy to see simple click of private or public and then lock it down with your password.

Here is another very interesting tidbit, so you may want to reconsider exactly how you name a pic in Photobucket.

I have a daff pic in a photobucket album and the album is set to private. The name on the pic is Belcantes-edge of front yard woods.

Criminy...I see several of my pics there, and it looks like they can be seen at a site called Graphics

hmmmm......

Here is a link that might be useful: Belcantes-edge of front yard woods-Google image results

HERE are the results for google images pink charm.

HERE are the google image results for pink charm-rd bed and my pic which is in the same private album is the first pic. I wonder if I delete the pic, if it will go away from the google results.
I'll try that later and see. My pic is the first one in the first row...sigh.

I don't think I'll be adding anymore such pics to photobucket until I can get them watermarked or something.

chemocurl, let me see if I understand what you are saying...that if someone post pic somewhere with the same name as your photobucket picture that the link will go to your pic in photobucket?

Is that what you are saying? If that is right I'm not liking that at all...Raven is right and I agree, that some changes to photobucket are not good ones.

Couldn't you just make the name like a password, with numbers and letters mixed together.

I made mine private in every way I know how, but I really don't care who sees mine or takes a copy. I do have the copy disabled, but if they found a way it is no big deal. I'm 75 and when I die the originals will be trashed.

first let me say OMG those are some beautiful flowers and I am so jealous because my beds are so lacking at this house, I had to leave all of mine behind when we moved.

I am not sure if photobucket blocks the google spiders or any other search engine spiders, that is a good question. Just what exactly does private mean to them?

By the way I got the red WOT warning page on that Graphics link so be careful there.

Here's my next question, are all the photo storage sites the same? Are there some that you use and are comfortable with the privacy of the site or all of them about the same in that respect?

I have had a lot of luck with imageshack they don't change things near as often as photobucket plus I love the firefox add on for it.

I also use some regular album sites that are very private
like winkflash this is the faq for winkflash concerning the web album part
Online Web Album Questions
many of those type sites make you order something from them at least once a year but winkflash does not. It is free to use an album there and there is no limit to number and they keep them forever according to that faq. I have used them for many years now with no problems and I have ordered some prints from them too and was happy with the quality.
http://www.winkflash.com/

I think many sites like photobucket are changing to make them more facebook like which to me is a big negative, if I want to be on a social network and share pics I will do it there, I want my photo albums private.

thanks RC, I will be finding somewhere else to store my photos, I see there are several postings where all this is being discussed. I'll do some research and decide what to do.
Thanks for the info.

chemocurl, let me see if I understand what you are saying...that if someone post pic somewhere with the same name as your photobucket picture that the link will go to your pic in photobucket?
No, that's not it at all. What I'm saying is that even though a pic is in an album marked as private, that the pic is still 'out there' and can be seen on Google images.

Here is another example.
Do a google search on Ellie Sept 22 2009 and then go to images on the results page.
You will then see my pic named Ellie Sept 22 2009
Can you pic out which pic is mine? That pic Ellie Sept 22 2009 is in a pbucket album marked as private

Couldn't you just make the name like a password, with numbers and letters mixed together.
It isn't the password that is the issue, please see above.

first let me say OMG those are some beautiful flowers
Thank you. I am a daffodil grower, collector, and show-er. I planted about 200 new (to me) cultivars last fall that I will see bloom for the first time this spring and am anxiously awaiting daff season here.

By the way I got the red WOT warning page on that Graphics link so be careful there.
Thanks...saw that and ignored it, but didn't click on anything there.

I've just recently started playing around a bit with Dropbox for on line pic and file storage and sharing.

Sue

Wow, thanks for posting this info. I had no idea PB allowed my photos to be seen by others but sure enough, some of my photos are out there. I used the tracker to identify the photos I've shared and moved the photos to break the links but I have no idea what can be done about the views from other PB users--several of my photos have been accessed via photobucket.com What I don't understand is if I take the name of the photo and search for it in PB it doesn't come up. How are others finding it?

I guess I'm going to have to move them all to another site.

I just discovered this while I was searching to see why My graphics showed up so small here????
Got that corrected but have to work with them as this is a little too large.
Have you seen this?
{{gwi:1451667}}What happens if you check where I put the arrows?
Would give us the privacy we want?

I have both of those checked on mine, I think it is just one more way to try to be more private on photobucket.

by the way for those wanting to know how to get to that option on your photobucket page up at the top click on the big green upload button then when that opens there is a small link offering customize upload options click on that to see the above.

You can keep the picture you post from acting as a link to your photobucket page by doing a little of the html yourself. Copy the direct link and then add <img src=paste direct link here>. They changed that several months ago and I kept clicking on photobucket pictures because if your cursor is over them they look like a live link. The html for the html link from photobucket is just like the html for a thumbnail except the original picture is used instead of a smaller version.
Here's a picture from my photobucket album which will not link back to the album.

{{gwi:1451669}}

Lovely photo, Bob...

Thanks, the Steller's Jay and I were looking each other over and I was glad to have my camera ready.

Beautiful. I have never seen that kind of Jay.

O.K., I'm a little frustrated now. I had unlinked the photos I have in PB but still can't keep photos from the viewing public. Next I opened an account with WinkFlash and loaded a few photos. I ran a test, copied a photo into an email and sent it. The person who received the email/photo clicked on the photo and was taken to WinkFlash and could go through the entire album (there were several photos I uploaded) b/c I was logged in at the same time. As soon as I logged out, it wouldn't let my friend back in. The problem is if I'm in the WinkFlash account any linked photos are then open and by turn the whole album is open. I didn't want my friend to see all the photos in the album and I sure don't want to worry when I'm in WinkFlash that anyone who had one linked photo can access all the photos in my albums.

Also, I couldn't find any privacy control settings on WinkFlash.

While I like being able to send copies of the photos to friends, I don't want them (or anyone else) to have that much access. Is there a site that actually secures your photos?

Thanks

Bob14, yours is a great suggestion but can it be applied to a whole album or only photo by photo?

Bob thank you for that suggestion, it worked for me.

{{gwi:1451671}}

That's right urlee. Whichever way is easiest for you does the same thing. Sfvera I don't think it would work for an album.
My take is that photobucket changed the code to link to the picture on photobucket as a way of advertising their site to attract users. It seems it might have backfired on them.

My take is that photobucket changed the code to link to the picture on photobucket as a way of advertising their site to attract users. It seems it might have backfired on them.

Pretty sneaky on their part. I would never have known if it weren't shown to me way back when.

I should have put it this way to see it.

{{gwi:1451674}}