Photobucket is not a free 3rd party host any longer.
http://photobucket.com/pricing
Only the top tier, $40/mo or $400/yr will allow 3rd party hosting.
what is 3rd party hosting?: hotlinking, or embedding your image on a forum by using IMG tags from an image hosting site. photobucket was orginally a company designed around doing just that. now they are making people pay for bandwidth, and worse than that, they are also placing ads on YOUR images, monetizing both sides.
why is this bad?: It is bad because if you have a project thread or a how-to article, your images will be blocked from linking to photobucket, a generic "upgrade this account to unlock it" image will be shown instead. click my project thread to see what this will look like.
my images arent affected.: YET. yet. there is only one plan that allows the 3rd party hosting and it is the top plan. they will allow direct linking with the second tier, which would be a text link directing you to photobucket ad pages.
what can I do?: do NOT pay for the upgrade. a free account is only good for online storage, not sharing. save all your images you dont have anywhere else and DELETE YOUR PHOTOBUCKET ACCOUNT.
dont let them pressure you, how many years will you pay $40/mo just to save your forum posts? find another online host like flickr or imgur or even use the space your ISP gives you and host them yourself. better to rip it like a band-aid and change now.
older guys will remember how bad it was when angelfire/tripod/geocities tried to monetize their free hosting and people did not pay, search results were full of dead links. this will happen with all your how-tos, projects, and even the ones you rely on for fixing the wifes car, or blogs with pumpkin carving ideas. photobucket was FOUNDED on being a free image host and now they have changed their mind. the impacts will be far reaching. DO NOT BUY AN UPGRADE unless you plan to keep paying forever.