Phishing hoax for Imageshack? Maybe not?

[JasonPratt]

Once I confirm one way or another, I should post this in our Digital AAR category, too (maybe in the Tabletop AAR, since that would also tend to use photo-hosting services).

In the past couple of weeks, I've received a few emails purporting to be from Imageshack. Specifically from noreply@imageshack.us.

The gist of the emails has been that they are going to force all users to go to a paid account, a not-unreasonable amount of $4 a month. After a certain point, free accounts will no longer be able to link successfully to their stored photos, and by early next year all free account photos will be deleted (so if you want to save the images offsite you have time to migrate before they're erased).

The first time I saw such an email, I went directly to Imageshack (not through the link in their email), and poked around. No evidence at all of a coming forced change to a paid account that I could find, or even any evidence of a paid account option! The latter made me suspicious I was simply overlooking something important -- I'm pretty sure there's a paid account option for uploading images larger than a certain limit in size (which has never affected me when doing AARs or whatever). But still, I was unable to confirm through a definitely legitimate access to IS that this was their plan. But again, I wasn't able to disconfirm it either.

So I decided to wait until the deadline for being able to off-link photos. If my photos still appeared, that would be strong if not decisive evidence this was a phishing hoax.

I recalled the deadline being Nov 1. Lo, Nov 1 came and went, and no interruption of service.

Feh, I thought; but I granted that maybe IS is so large that it could take a few days to interrupt everyone's offsite links. Or maybe there had been an extension.

Then came a new email this morning.

ImageShack Content delivery policy changes

Dear ImageShack users, since 2004
ImageShack's team has been working
hard to create easiest to use, best
performing Image Hosting and
delivery solution for all users. To continue to
improve our services
for our premium users, ImageShack will implement policy
changes that
are listed in detail below.

Starting November 1st, 2015
ImageShack will be implementing a new
policy that will affect image delivery
for some of our users, here are
those changes:

Premium ImageShack accounts
will not be affected in any way. You will
continue to be able to use your
ImageShack account, and all images
will be served to your pages.

Any free
accounts (non-premium) will no longer deliver images to any
sites, blogs or
forums. This change will be implemented by November
1st,2015. If you have a
free account, have images that are linked to
any sites, blogs or forums and
want to continue to have images
delivered to those pages, please convert to
premium account
here:https://imageshack.us/upgrade, for only $3.99/mo, you
will
continue to have unlimited storage and unlimited delivery of
your
images.

You can read about those changes in more details
here:
https://medium.com/@ImageShack/imageshack-content-delivery-policy-changes-3984af30964e

ImageShack
Team.

Nothing anymore about erasing the freely stored images eventually; but maybe that has been temporarily rescinded.

However, plenty of suspicious things.

1.) The deadline for loss of free image access is still listed as Nov 1. My images still access.

2.) The document for the policy content doesn't go to IS, but to medium.com. What?? Don't they have their own blog, or somewhere on their own site they could post those details? But then, going to the legitimate site and clicking on the blog does nothing but reload the site.

So I was thinking of writing it off as a phishing expedition.

Checking their wikipedia page however confirms some, not all, of the email!

In January 2014, ImageShack announced that it was switching to a subscription based service, and would no longer offer free uploads. [...] On 17 January 2014, Imageshack announced the change of its business model, which was moved from an advertising-based model to a subscription-based model. This change now allows only premium users to upload images.

Except anyone can alter a wiki page with whatever they want. And I've been able to upload images all through 2014 and up through my Bearly Competent AAR in 2015, a few months ago. Haven't tried uploading any images since, but I haven't heard chatter of anyone having trouble with that either.

I did find the upgrade button on the legitimate site a few minutes ago, however, and the address and pricing information (for what might be called Basic premium service) is exactly as shown in the email quoted above. Also, what they're offering for Basic is equivalent to what was already free.

Man... I dunno.  :-\ :-\ :-\ :-\ The safest thing I guess would be to register for the basic plan through my usual IS access??

[Nefaro]

ImageShack went pay-to-use awhile back AFAIK. 

Either they just made it official, or it's Phishing.  Either way, I stopped using them since they started asking for money to host the occasional screenshot I used to put up there. 

Started using Tinypic for hosting the occasional pic.  I'm fine with entering an "Are You Human?" question, and the occasional 6 second mini-commercial.

[JasonPratt]

Update: soon afterward I figured out (from Imageshack directly, not through the potentially posionous email link) that I was already on a paid account. And had been for a while. Probably because I wanted to reward for their service, which features no commercials or anything like that.

So the emails were almost certainly phishing.