OK ,
Looks like you are correct, my appologies.
People on other forums have been saying the same thing and when I checked my images were still there and working just fine.
A while back there was a similar thing going around as an email which was a scam demanding payment.
A sign of the times I suppose.
It costs a lot of money to run a big web server.
So photo bucket is spending money to host all these images which are going to other web sites which are making the profit from people spending a lot of time looking at the photobucket images.
Thus I can understand they want some sort of payment.
The amount they are asking is stupid because I can buy server space for a lot less than that and link to my own web space.
They will be missed just like Klicka & Zoom and all those other photo hosting sites that have gone but the world will not stop turning.
I only had a hundred or so images there and the reason for linking most of them is long gone.
Still not sure it is not some sort of rerouting scam as photobucket have always sent me emails to my registered address when they were changing conditions addressed to me personally unlike all of the scams which are addressed to "dear photobucket user "
For all we know Photobucket might have been hacked by a third party demanding millions from them.
I have noted that it only appears to be windows useres who have had their photos quarrintined.
Time will tell.