They really stuffed things up, big time.
I just went through all my PB images, checked that I still had the originals, & deleted them all & closed my PB Account.
Anyone know the "external linking & embed" details of the other hosting sites?
After I did a very quick Wiki search, it appears that a lot of the hosting sites have certain rules about how long they will
keep your images..... In some...a paid Account helps in this regard.
From the PB wiki article...
As of June 30, 2017, Photobucket requires a $99 annual subscription to allow external linking to
all hosted images and a $399 annual subscription to allow the embedding of images on
third-party websites, such as personal blogs and forums.