from what others are saying there charging 400 to get your photos back from photo bucket I have already made switch to imugur PB wanted the 4 bills to
access your pics for 3rd party hosting, they were not ransoming your pics. Granted they did not make it easy to remove them but I did just that despite the fact I still had copies on my PC.
If that was the only place you had those pics stored I don't have too much sympathy for you. Heck I don't even trust my own hard drive much less some service I pay nothing for. Always have a contingency for data, media, documents, whatever. I'd never keep one of almost anything. It's too cheap and easy to archive/back up.
As far as imgur or any other "free" hosting service goes, I wouldn't trust them either. If you read the "Terms of Service that you electronically signed when you went on there you would have agreed to this in the "Stuff Not To Do" section:
Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network. If you do – and we will be the judge – or if you do anything illegal, in addition to any other legal rights we may have, we will ban you along with the site you're hotlinking from, delete all your images, report you to the authorities if necessary, and prevent you from viewing any images hosted on Imgur.com. We mean it.Good luck. I'm still considering other options.
Regarding pictureless posts here, well I've got a ton of 'em too and don't relish the thought of catching them all up. There are a few, though, that merit recovery (IMO) and will likely do that at some point. Sad thing is there is some stuff that has been posted by folks that was extremely valuable (I'm thinking about the auger blade sharpening tutorial by AX7 for example). That may probably lost forever.
Way back in the day ISPs used to offer a certain amount of free web space with your contract. That would have been the perfect place to host your own stuff from. I actually created a small website with mine and maintained that for awhile. Too bad those options are gone...
I hope PhotoSchmuckit rots.....