Morris Minor Owners Club

Images posted on this site hosted by IMGUR image hosting site now show a blue box with the legend, this image is no longer available in your zone. in other words imgur has turned it's back on the UK due to the Governments introduction of the online safety bill. It's already had wide reaching consequences for my Morris minor restoration pages. and the early stages showing the car on the Ferry coming across the channel are no longer either viewable or editable to replace them with the same images from an alternative image host like Flickr. I'm Bemused,let down, down hearted, annoyed, and I can't even e mail my local MP, SHE'S A WASTE OF SPACE!

You and me both.
The IT guy on the Citroen BX forum has found a workaround, no idea what he did but now the Imgur links are active again.
That too is a phpBB platform so whatever he did should work on here. Maybe the IT gurus on here could get in contact.
The other way to see you Imgur pictures is to download a VPN, Opera search engine has a free one as standard. Trouble is everyone else would need to have a VPN to see you images

However, I presume you still have those images on your own device, where your pictures are kept ?

David JM wrote: ↑Tue Oct 07, 2025 1:49 pm Images posted on this site hosted by IMGUR image hosting site now show a blue box with the legend, this image is no longer available in your zone. in other words imgur has turned it's back on the UK due to the Governments introduction of the online safety bill. It's already had wide reaching consequences for my Morris minor restoration pages. and the early stages showing the car on the Ferry coming across the channel are no longer either viewable or editable to replace them with the same images from an alternative image host like Flickr. I'm Bemused,let down, down hearted, annoyed, and I can't even e mail my local MP, SHE'S A WASTE OF SPACE!

Why on earth should your MP be concerned about you choosing to use a 3rd party free image hosting website.??

This forum has the facility to upload images directly; if you choose to link to free 3rd party hosting, I kind of feel that was your choice.... 3rd party hosting, especially on a free site, leaves you at the whim of the host, always has, always will do.

Why would you not keep a copy of any important image on your own storage rather than trust any 3rd party?

Hadn't actually heard of this, but looking into it I see there was a BBC article about it a while back stating they were going to do this from 30th Sep. because they're facing fines - but those attempting to fine them have said historic breaches will still be fined even if a company closes off the UK.

I tried to use the method of backing up the image url to the Wayback Machine (Archive.org) but there was a strange issue, rather than it showing the archived version as it should, it tries loading imgur directly which of course results in the not available in your region error (was expecting archive.org backups to work since they're in the USA). Fails with both the forum thread itself, and the imgur links:

https://web.archive.org/web/20251008081 ... hp?t=78715
https://web.archive.org/web/20251008081 ... om/X4DUxhB

You can request a download of your data from imgur.

https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/article ... ed-Kingdom

Why on earth should your MP be concerned about you choosing to use a 3rd party free image hosting website.??

She Did reply, maybe she's not as useless as I thought.




Beccy Cooper MP via caseworkermp.com
Tue 14 Oct, 15:16 (5 days ago)
to me

Dear Mr Miles,

Thank you very much for contacting me to share your concerns regarding the withdrawal of Imgur’s image hosting services in the UK and the wider impact of the Online Safety Act.

Firstly, I want to say how sorry I am that you have been affected in this way. It must be incredibly frustrating to have your car restoration posts and years of enthusiasm for such a cherished British classic restricted due to these new regulations.

The Act, which aims to make the internet safer for children by requiring platforms to prevent access to harmful content, places certain responsibilities on online service providers.

I very much hope that service providers will restore access in future to material which does not fall foul of this legislation. In the meantime, I will continue to monitor the issue and will keep your comments on file, should opportunities arise to raise this matter further.

Thank you again for writing to me and for sharing your passion for the Morris Minor and classic car heritage.

Best wishes,
Dr Beccy Cooper MP
Member of Parliament for Worthing West
Parliamentary Office: House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA
Telephone: 01903 496390 between 10am - 1pm Monday - Friday

We never got an answer as to whether you have your own copies of the photographs. If you do, this is annoying but not a total loss. I have lots of my landscape photography (mostly medium format film photographs) on Flickr. If I lost access to that I still have my own copies both electronic (including backups) and hard copy prints.

Perhaps a workaround is to ask somebody who lives outside the UK to download all of your photographs and send them to you. Presumably, they are all still there but you just cannot access them.

Stephen

If you download Opera search engine (free) it has a VPN option that tricks Imgur into thinking you're in another country so you can access the site without issue. You can then download your pictures back onto you device and forget about Imgur. Doesn't help with those you've posted on forums unless other viewers have a VPN as well.
If you use a paid for Avast anti-virus it also has a VPN that you can use by changing the country of origin, Belgium worked for me.

With my limited knowledge of computer issues I thought you had to have the images/pictures on your device before you could send them somewhere or do anything else with them, isn’t that where they start, how can you loose them ?

If you use a hosting site like Imgur to store your images then delete them from your device to free up space then at the moment you're stuffed.
I know I almost filled my PC with photos but downloaded them onto an external drive, I only used Imgur to share to forums. I now upload them direct from my device.
My old windows 10 PC is no longer supported by Microsoft so I've switched to a MacBook where I can store images on a cloud server. Still getting used to it.

panky wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 4:31 pm If you use a hosting site like Imgur to store your images then delete them from your device to free up space then at the moment you're stuffed.

Ah, got it !