Photobucket Users - Heads Up

[DeskJockey]

There's a class action lawsuit happening in the US after PB decided to sell "dormant" account contents to train AI models. PB has argued that they cannot reliably locate a user to ensure they don't violate privacy laws, so presumably that means everything is up for grabs.

Might be too late to avoid being included in the training data, but if you have an account on there I would consider deleting it. The way it is described they have been very underhanded in their approach.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... suit-says/

[Jobbo]

Thanks for the prompt. I have had so many e-mails threatening to delete it that I had assumed it already was, but it turns out they hadn't after all. I have done so manually. It takes a lot of clicking 'yes I'm sure' to get there.

[16vCento]

Cheers, as Jobbo said, with the amount of emails they sent I thought it had gone!

[Simon]

Thanks for the prompt. I have had so many e-mails threatening to delete it that I had assumed it already was, but it turns out they hadn't after all. I have done so manually. It takes a lot of clicking 'yes I'm sure' to get there.

Very much this. Thought they were holding old photos hostage to make you sign up to see them, but when you delete the account there's the option to be sent a download link. Turns out I only had one photo in it - a schematic for a 5V PSU!

All gone.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Cheers for the heads up. I'd ignored the hundreds of e-mails over the years. Have just downloaded all of my photo data (quite a lot!) and deleted.

[John]

As above, always ignored the emails and thanks for the link. I've downloaded mine and I've got hundreds of photos to wade through although it seems the vast majority are in potato vision.

[JonMad]

Interesting. Also been ignoring the emails here about deleting my photos, as they never seem to do anything other than threaten to do so. Might download them and delete the account now then (or just leave them there and wait to spot something in an AI-generated image that looks vaguely like something I once took a photo of).

[dinny_g]

At the risk of being a bit luddite, should I care???

I get the whole “my image, my right, my decision” etc but in the global scheme of things, does it really matter that some company adds a few images of me to billions of images used for some algorithm or other???

[DeskJockey]

Your choice to care.

1) the way they've gone about it is underhanded and sneaky. By not objecting or deleting your data you're implicitly condoning it. That will serve as a precedent for others.

2) by having the data out there uncontrolled and uncontrollable it could help create more realistic AI deepfakes of you, including you in situations and contexts you've never been near or involved with. It could be used to try to scam your friends and family.

3) anybody else that was in those pictures presumably did not give their consent for their images to be included, and same applies to them as for you.

[dinny_g]

You make a compelling argument - have to try to remember my password now

[Mito Man]

I only used photobucket to upload images for spotted pics and random memes so they can have that