F*CK Photobucket

I noticed a few weeks back some kerfuffle on the interwebs about Photobucket blocking 3rd party hosting. I didn't give it much thought at the time because I didn't really know what 3rd party hosting was all about.
I had used their service as my little Bro had recommended it to me as a way to share photos. So naturally, when I started blogging I was dubious about the 1GB limit Blogger put on uploads being enough so kept using Photobandit. That was until I got sick of their glacially slow upload speeds and the CONSTANT bombardment of pop-ups. Then I went to a paid service with Smugmug and have been very happy with their price and service.

Fast forward to the other day when I was looking for a ride report I wrote back in 2013. When I found it of course I saw that all of the photos show this.....

FFS!!!!!

To cap it off apparently you can unlock all of your photos for either a $100USD or $500USD annual fee! Thanks for the notice Photobandit.

I don't mind that these people want to make some money from their hosting but the manner in which they informed their consumers/customers is completely underhanded. If this is their way of cleaning out their servers and customers, well then, they might be onto something because I am reading all over the net diatribes from enraged users who are bailing on them.

Being a bit ahhhrrrm....older......and hopefully a little less rash I am trying to come up with the best solution to this issue of broken links. 

Should I pay for the $100 subscription so that I can see what all of my photos are on each blog post, then re-host them on Smugmug or on the Blogger photo server, then delete my Photobandit account? Or do I try to remember what each photo was from 2010 to mid 2013 and fill them in that way?

 Either way will be quite time consuming but I am happy to hear ideas from you guys as to what you think the best course of action might be......

I think I need to go to my happy place for a while......

Cheers.