As some of you may have noticed from our recent tweet, we've disabled the embedding of images from untrusted sites for the time being. I'm here to elaborate for those concerned.
When you visit any website, you expose your ip to that website.
This is because you're downloading information from its host, their web page's html, css, images/media, etc.
Alongside attachments, which allows users to upload their images and attach it to their posts, it has long been a feature where users were able to embed externally hosted images via the img tag. Meaning viewers of the image would download the image from the place of origin and it would be placed in that spot on the post.
That embedding feature is what's been temporarily disabled, and is why most of your images will now only display as a link to those websites.
A reminder that you may still use our attachment feature. If you embed external images in your product/service threads, please swap them out for attachments for the time being.
The concern is that because you download the images as soon as you load the page, rather than being able to see the link and decide for yourself whether or not you want to visit and expose your ip address to that website, you may potentially be exposing your ip to those you'd rather not have it.
Unranked members reading this may have noticed that their ability to send private messages was previously disabled. This was a precautionary means of preventing the possibility of users joining our site to target our users by sending them private messages with embedded images that make a point in actually recording/logging the ips visiting it, thus being able to associate the ip with a particular member.
The ability to associate it with someone is why conversations were disabled specifically, which was not a concern for anywhere else on our site, where the viewers of the media is not isolated to anyone in particular.
Threads regarding this abuse method were previously deleted from public view while Jayson and I worked out a more satisfying temporary solution to the potential privacy concern. (The disabling of embedded images from untrusted sites).
As many of you realize, there is no place that malicious and toxic people get drawn to more than places where they can gain attention and controversy.
In order to prevent those with bad intentions from being encouraged to abuse the privacy of their fellow MCM users through those disclosing the means of doing so via threads, these threads were removed until the embedding had been disabled.
I've personally sent out private messages to many of those who seemed concerned in these threads, and apologized. All were cooperative and I'd like to thank you guys sincerely for that.
I'd like to clarify to a few people who seemed to believe that perhaps MCM's database had been breached. This is not the case at all. Embedded external images have been a long standing unquestioned feature used by and for our community. It is merely the possibility of targeting via this feature that has resulted in these actions.
Your privacy and security is always our greatest concern.
Mick will be setting up a proxy for MCM as soon as he becomes available, which will allow the use of the embedding external images while shielding the privacy of our members by hiding your ip behind our own proxy's ip.
Thank you for understanding and your patience in the meantime.
If you have any concerns, I'm happy to address them.
When you visit any website, you expose your ip to that website.
This is because you're downloading information from its host, their web page's html, css, images/media, etc.
Alongside attachments, which allows users to upload their images and attach it to their posts, it has long been a feature where users were able to embed externally hosted images via the img tag. Meaning viewers of the image would download the image from the place of origin and it would be placed in that spot on the post.
That embedding feature is what's been temporarily disabled, and is why most of your images will now only display as a link to those websites.
A reminder that you may still use our attachment feature. If you embed external images in your product/service threads, please swap them out for attachments for the time being.
The concern is that because you download the images as soon as you load the page, rather than being able to see the link and decide for yourself whether or not you want to visit and expose your ip address to that website, you may potentially be exposing your ip to those you'd rather not have it.
Unranked members reading this may have noticed that their ability to send private messages was previously disabled. This was a precautionary means of preventing the possibility of users joining our site to target our users by sending them private messages with embedded images that make a point in actually recording/logging the ips visiting it, thus being able to associate the ip with a particular member.
The ability to associate it with someone is why conversations were disabled specifically, which was not a concern for anywhere else on our site, where the viewers of the media is not isolated to anyone in particular.
Threads regarding this abuse method were previously deleted from public view while Jayson and I worked out a more satisfying temporary solution to the potential privacy concern. (The disabling of embedded images from untrusted sites).
As many of you realize, there is no place that malicious and toxic people get drawn to more than places where they can gain attention and controversy.
In order to prevent those with bad intentions from being encouraged to abuse the privacy of their fellow MCM users through those disclosing the means of doing so via threads, these threads were removed until the embedding had been disabled.
I've personally sent out private messages to many of those who seemed concerned in these threads, and apologized. All were cooperative and I'd like to thank you guys sincerely for that.
I'd like to clarify to a few people who seemed to believe that perhaps MCM's database had been breached. This is not the case at all. Embedded external images have been a long standing unquestioned feature used by and for our community. It is merely the possibility of targeting via this feature that has resulted in these actions.
Your privacy and security is always our greatest concern.
Mick will be setting up a proxy for MCM as soon as he becomes available, which will allow the use of the embedding external images while shielding the privacy of our members by hiding your ip behind our own proxy's ip.
Thank you for understanding and your patience in the meantime.
If you have any concerns, I'm happy to address them.
