Image Policy Change

[Zachrulez]

Punishing people for unknowingly linking images from malware sites is stupid. If you're worried about the risk of hotlinking, then just ban it completely.

[Zachrulez]

no. this is a much better solution than removing hotlinking altogether.

No, it's really not. You're punishing people that really don't know any better. That's dumber than we're claiming the people doing this to be.

This is really one of those things where if you want hotlinking, you need to understand the risks that come with it otherwise you just don't have it, or you host the images on the site and force them to go through some virus scanner on the way in or whatever.

[Zachrulez]

We're saying you're accountable for what you post. And to my knowledge, chamber hasn't said they're going to ban you instantly if you do it or anything. I think that's fair.

And removing hotlinking is a TERRIBLE, terrible, terrible idea that will hurt the community until and unless we have some sort of image hosting on site. So yeah. If the options are (a) implement this change to minimize hotlinking from malware sites and (b) shut down hotlinking altogether, I'll pick b every time.

Well Zoraster, I majored in computer repair in college and something around 80-90% of the students didn't really know what they were doing when it came to fixing computers. Hell, I was the only one that could set up a dual boot of windows 2000 and xp. This is a group of people that were supposed to be computer saavy.

Now translate that to however many everyday people we have using this site. What is being suggested is that we hold that amount of ignorance accountable? It's just a terrible solution. Eliminating the source of the problem is a better approach to this. (Which is the fact that it's possible to hotlink to malware infected sites in the first place.) What's going to happen under this system is you're going to just spend ages stripping people of the ability to hotlink because of the constant wave of newbies who don't know any better.

[Zachrulez]

Or you warn the newbie that they hotlinked to a site that had malware and describe how to avoid it. They're now on notice. If they continue to do it, remove hotlinking privileges.

Eliminating the source of the problem also removes the ability to embed photos onto the forum unless I'm mistaken. And that's not a good thing.

Unless you host them on site and only allow them to be posted that way.

Allowing hotlinked images is a risk, and it's easier to ban it than it is to try to tell a bunch of people how to do it right.

[Zachrulez]

Is there a need on this site to be able to post images? Aside from avatars anyway, which can be uploaded.

Anyway I'm pretty sure on this other BB board I browse that it's possible to upload images when you post them onto a forum rather than hotlink. So it doesn't seem to me that it would be impossible to implement that as a feature to replace hotlinking.

[Zachrulez]

Yes.

Explain this need?

[Zachrulez]

Mafia OPs and flavor off the top of my head.

That's not a need.

[Zachrulez]

It's not really a need, it's just something we want around because it makes it a little more enjoyable. But let's not confuse that with a need.

Anyway, see 34.

My issue with the policy on top of it just being dumb on it's face is that you'll be scolding people who could very well have hotlinked from a site when it was clean and then through a series of bad luck from sites becoming infected after the fact they find themselves without hotlinking abilities.

[Zachrulez]

I mean, we're on a website we frequent entirely for fun. Nothing here is actually a 'need'.

Well I'm qualifying it as what's NECESSARY to be able to play mafia.

[Zachrulez]

Who needs formatting, ISOs and a search function anyway?

Well none of those carry any obvious security risks anyway.

ALSO FEEL FREE TO COMPLETELY IGNORE A PROPOSED ALTERNATIVE IN POST 34 ONCE AGAIN.

AGAIN, this is not that big of a deal either way. We're not going to be banning people willy-nilly cause they accidentally linked malware; I am guessing it doesn't happen that often anyway, and '*smackonthewrist* hey don't do that anymore, stupid' will pretty much solve the issue. *shrug*

It would amuse me if it turned out that the complaints about this are coming from people who are actually infected by Malware and not because the sites themselves have malware. The fact that the OP states only Chrome is blocking the pages makes me wonder. (I wouldn't say Chrome is any "safer" than the alternatives.) But yeah, I wouldn't assume anything about where Malware is coming from.

[Zachrulez]

So I'm reading the OP more and we're encouraging copying the images to a reputable source when the user is on a malware site so that the site itself doesn't get a malware warning.

So this just got stupider.

You're angry at the user, who is probably INFECTED WITH MALWARE BECAUSE THEY GOT THE IMAGE FROM A COMPROMISED SITE AND DON'T KNOW IT, and you want them to continue being infected, but while they are, just make sure you post it from a clean site?

My head... christ.

[Zachrulez]

Yes?

The problem is that Chrome will block pages with malware links. Since many people use chrome, that's an issue.

Yup, one worth punishing the user for. (Which by what I'm reading about poses no actual malware threat, we're just going to punish users for triggering a warning they might not know about because they don't use chrome.)

[Zachrulez]

It's not about punishing. It's about stopping the problem.

The problem is apparently a design flaw in Chrome, so yeah.

[Zachrulez]

Well from what I'm reading the images themselves are actually safe. (Copy it and upload to a reputable site.) Apparently even a safe image will trigger a malware warning in chrome because chrome will block an entire blacklisted site? Seems like bad browser design to me.

[Zachrulez]

Anyway, I'm pretty sure most if not all browsers have built in anti-malware, so the onus you're putting on the user in this regard is unrealistic. If their own browser won't flag it, you're basically punishing them for not using chrome.

[Zachrulez]

Well yeah, it's done through a blacklist. Blacklists get bigger, reputable sites become unreputable, become compromised and then get fixed and all that. Basically this is like trying to contain a wildfire in a dry forest.

[Zachrulez]

Oh and browsers probably don't actively scan for malware, but I'm pretty sure anti-viruses will.

[Zachrulez]

But yeah, I don't see why there's a need to threaten punishment for this. If you explain to whoever is doing this stuff what is going on, how they can clean their computer and how to keep from accessing a malware contaminated site again, I don't see why this would be a problem for anyone. I don't think there's a single user on this site that wants to be infected by malware.

[Zachrulez]

I don't think there's a single user on this site that wants to be infected by malware.

which is kinda the whole point

Nothing in the OP seems to come even close to giving a damn about the fact that the person posting the image might not even realize their computer is compromised. (If it was me, I'd be more pissed that ms seems to care more about the implications of what it means to the site vs what it means for my computer.)

Hell the proposed solution to avoid punishment even dances around the idea of how to copy images from a compromised site safely. (Which you'd have to know was compromised in the first place.) That's like teaching a kid how to play with fire.

Anyway, bluntly. You can't hold people responsible for that at a user level. If you can't handle that little bit of administrative duty, then you shouldn't be an admin. Not everyone is going to have the same knowledge as you and the community is only going to suffer from an admin expecting that.

[Zachrulez]

It's not someone's computer that's compromised from what I can tell. It's the site itself you hotlink from. Maybe that's why you're having such a severe disconnect from everyone, zach?

The way it works is that someone searches somewhere for a comic or something. They find it on a less than reputable site. They take a link of the jpg or whatever from that site, and then they slap on a couple of [img] tags. Then it trips it.

It's nothing about their computer being infected or not.

Well you have to visit the site to hotlink from it Zor. Then your computer generally becomes compromised. (Depending on what's actually on the site.)

[Zachrulez]

Anyway, again. I'm going to put the emphasis on the fact that you can't expect the user to know what isn't reputable. The filter chrome uses along with any other anti-malware browser of anti-virus changes frequently.

Also Chrome is the only thing flagging this stuff, then Chrome is the problem, not the users. (Because if their anti-malware isn't picking it up, what the heck are you expecting exactly?)

[Zachrulez]

I don't use either, but I not at particular risk of linking to compromised sites because avast is integrated into my opera to detect malware sites.

And as far as I can tell, MS actually is clean. The problem is an over aggressive chrome browser which is like the number 3 browser? I mean this might be something you need to accept as a downside of chrome.

[Zachrulez]

Chrome is a very popular browser. It kind of depends on how you count, but by some metrics, it's the number 1 browser.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_shar ... b_browsers

A lot changes in a year I guess.

[Zachrulez]

I use opera, I'm not sure what the site will identify it as though.

[Zachrulez]

IE 8 might be a high number. You can't actually upgrade to 9 if you have xp or earlier I think it is.