Photobucket did the same thing I almost lost all of my photos that I had on it from my early teenage years because I almost missed the email(I was two days from the DDay)

Basically they decided that they no longer wanted their free tier and any photos that were stored on the platform as a free tear had a certain amount of time before they would be deleted. The platform heavily tried to convince people who are on the free tier that the only way of getting their photos would be to pay for their premium tier for a month and then cancel but I was able to figure out a way to just download it it was hidden heavily in the settings behind multiple paywall triggers.