G'day.
Before I begin, I'd just like to say that this post is strictly informative, and I'm not going to sit here and bash on you.
I was buying some stuff on Ebay, and I bought an item in which the description's images were protected by auctiva.com. In that sense, I mean to say that when you right click on the image it pops up an alert box.
I, as a professional web design specialist, noticed that this isn't exactly... up to par on current image protection methods. This is easy to get around. Just try right clicking, then when the popup box comes up, hit enter and right click on the image at the same time, try that a few times until the menu comes up. That's how I saved the images.
Another deal there, is that if you look into the page's source, you'll notice right near the bottom of the page, a Javascript selfHostedIMAGEURL: line that declares the location of the image. At that point, you can copy and paste that URL into the browser and it takes you directly to the unprotected image.
I also noticed that when I clicked one to see the larger version, it brought up an auctiva window that displayed the large version, which was as well "protected." Same deal. Enter and right click at the same time, or view source, but this time the image URL is located inside of an img tag's src attribute.
Javascript is definitely an effective method of protecting images, but there has to be more work put into it than just hiding it within the source code.
Take a look into different methods.
For normal, every day Ebay users, yeah its no problem, but for those more mischievious, or those that would like the image, its definitely not a proper method to protect the image.
Now, as there is no way of protecting an image 100%, especially because if I really, really wanted it I could just screenshot it, or use Vista's new little tool that allows you to copy parts of the screen and save them as images. (I do not condone the use of Vista, its not good. Go XP.)
The one thing that mainly stood out was the fact that I so easily gained access to the unprotected image. There isn't even an anti-leeching deal there, its just there, ready to be taken.
This post is to inform the administrators that you may want to look into the methods you're using for protecting your images, and probably start thinking up new ideas, or using Google.
Again, G'day.
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