Spyware etc
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This is also the strangest comment/insult I have ever received : )Gambit37 wrote:I still maintain that you look more like my friend who looks like Chris Barrie, than Chris Barrie.
I not only look like someone els,e but somehow I dont' have the talent to look like someone famous, just like someone who is better at lookign like someone famous...or something ...!
So yeah, spyware...bad....
With Firefox I get redirected. In what browser do you manage to actually see the picture Sucinum ?
Look at the HTML source code it's pretty interesting :
Look at the HTML source code it's pretty interesting :
Code: Select all
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<META http-equiv="Refresh" content="2;url=http://www.directnicparking.com/">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<!-- 403 Forbidden -->
<!-- The file specified (/artistes/images/spine/amazone.jpg) may not be linked from web pages outside of this host (crystalsrules.com). -->
<!-- tigershark/3.0.113 at <A href="http://www.directnic.com/">dn1.directnic.com</A> -->
<!-- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX -->
<!-- XXXXXX Extra bytes to force IE to display this page XXXXXX -->
<!-- XXXXXX (instead of its internal error page) XXXXXX -->
<!-- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX -->
</BODY>
</HTML>
I don't think so. If you look at the source, it says "The file specified (/artistes/images/spine/amazone.jpg) may not be linked from web pages outside of this host (crystalsrules.com)"
You can see the actual image without any virus in it by going to http://www.crystalsrules.com/artistes/spine2.html (it's the amazon on the left. Right click on it, select View image, and there you have it, the same URL without any redirection.
The problem here is that Sucinum gave us the direct URL of the image, which is called hotlinking, something the webhost probably doesn't want (banning hotlinking is supposed to save bandwidth) so their server is set up to redirect all the "hotlinks" to that weird spam site. I guess this makes anitvirus software tick, but there shouldn't be any danger.
You can see the actual image without any virus in it by going to http://www.crystalsrules.com/artistes/spine2.html (it's the amazon on the left. Right click on it, select View image, and there you have it, the same URL without any redirection.
The problem here is that Sucinum gave us the direct URL of the image, which is called hotlinking, something the webhost probably doesn't want (banning hotlinking is supposed to save bandwidth) so their server is set up to redirect all the "hotlinks" to that weird spam site. I guess this makes anitvirus software tick, but there shouldn't be any danger.
- Gambit37
- Should eat more pies
- Posts: 13720
- Joined: Wed May 31, 2000 1:57 pm
- Location: Location, Location
- Contact:
It's not paranoid -- hotlinking is a major and costly issue for webmasters. Disabling it is essential if you are to retain cost control.
Imagine you have a 100KB JPEG on your site and somebody links directly to it in a forum post. It's a popular forum, so maybe 200 people view that post during one day. That's at least 200 x 100Kb = 20,000Kb or 20MB of bandwidth used (rough calc!). Multiply that by new users, numbers of days or weeks or any other contributing factor and your allocated data transfer will soon be eaten up.
Any decent ISP costs money -- and in the scenario I've just depictedm, you as a webmaster are paying for a bunch of people who are not your customers to view one of your images for free. That's bandwidth theft and disabling hotlinking prevents it.
Imagine you have a 100KB JPEG on your site and somebody links directly to it in a forum post. It's a popular forum, so maybe 200 people view that post during one day. That's at least 200 x 100Kb = 20,000Kb or 20MB of bandwidth used (rough calc!). Multiply that by new users, numbers of days or weeks or any other contributing factor and your allocated data transfer will soon be eaten up.
Any decent ISP costs money -- and in the scenario I've just depictedm, you as a webmaster are paying for a bunch of people who are not your customers to view one of your images for free. That's bandwidth theft and disabling hotlinking prevents it.
- sucinum
- Pal Master
- Posts: 872
- Joined: Wed Apr 18, 2001 1:00 am
- Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
- Contact:
my homepage had 4057 visits and 107195 visits, making a total traffic of 1.44 gb. i have 10 gb traffic with my webspace, so theres a lot of left. i store all my avatars and stuff on this webspace and also post some pictures from there in forums, but this doen't produce a mentionable amout of traffic (and it's 1000s of views of them). of course i don't have too much pics of interest on my webspace, a galery might have greater problems. if my host would block that to stop me wasting traffic (in their sense), i would change immediately. in january i used up 1.58 gb of traffic with only 3386 visitors, all due the change from tables to css (which also increases browser/user agent compliancy and allows to chance the font size in any degree, next to that).
i don't see a sense in preventing traffic in a dimension below 1 or 2 gb a month. it isn't THAT rare today. before cutting service (allowing hotlinks is a kind of) i would rather code my homepage correctly or compress pictures, which is something this host didn't care of.
but i don't get this protection. an avatar-collection-page has a 100% working hotlink-blocker which even blocks display via [img]-code in forums, which is afaik a htaccess-thing and quite easy to setup. this seems to be some java-script or similar and doesn't work too reliable. so why _this_ "protection"? or whatever it is...
i don't see a sense in preventing traffic in a dimension below 1 or 2 gb a month. it isn't THAT rare today. before cutting service (allowing hotlinks is a kind of) i would rather code my homepage correctly or compress pictures, which is something this host didn't care of.
but i don't get this protection. an avatar-collection-page has a 100% working hotlink-blocker which even blocks display via [img]-code in forums, which is afaik a htaccess-thing and quite easy to setup. this seems to be some java-script or similar and doesn't work too reliable. so why _this_ "protection"? or whatever it is...
Looks like some scumbag nicked my new switch card that the bank decided to spontaneously send me without warning. So they froze my old card when when it expired (6 months before its expiry date, but one month after this phantom new card was apparently sent). I say apparently, because they didn't actually know if they had sent me one or not, or where they sent it to. Eh? But they are both cancelled now, to be on the safe side. They wouldn't let me have my balance either, despite me giving them my mother's maiden name, and allsorts of other stuff. They even asked me for my phonenumber. Which I had given them the previous day, which they had just dialled so they could speak to me as they were doing at that moment.
I despair.
I despair.
- Gambit37
- Should eat more pies
- Posts: 13720
- Joined: Wed May 31, 2000 1:57 pm
- Location: Location, Location
- Contact:
But if someone nicked your account details and stole all your money and you discovered it was because the bank didn't have *enough* security checks in place you'd be pretty angry wouldn't you? I appreciate that it's a pain and that some policies can be a bit silly, but I'd rather my bank made those checks than not.
I agree with you both... It's all about balance between everything locked up by paranoia and overly loose security.
Last week I bought a 430 euros LCD monitor through the internet. When I picked it up, I had my ID and credit card ready as required by the website instructions, but the salesperson didn't ask me for anything except my order number... And the screen was already paid for ! Almost anyone could have picked it up... Kind of scary !
Last week I bought a 430 euros LCD monitor through the internet. When I picked it up, I had my ID and credit card ready as required by the website instructions, but the salesperson didn't ask me for anything except my order number... And the screen was already paid for ! Almost anyone could have picked it up... Kind of scary !