Flash - security and searchability??

CynthiaM

A friend of mine was discussing how she wanted to set up a website and wanted something that was only flash as she felt it was more secure with respect to unauthorized use of you images (makes sense because if you try to right click on flash your choices have to do with the player setting). Then I was reading somewhere else that a problem with all flash is your images don't get picked up by a search engine.

So I was wondering, what happens if you go into your gallery settings and force a gallery to slideshow. You have essentially forced a gallery to a flash gallery, but it is based on images that reside on smugmug. Do you lose out on the searchability of your images if the gallery is forced to slideshow?

And what about my friend's comment about the security of flash? True, false or sometimes?

Andy

Googlebot sees a whole different view of your site than you do - so don't worry about that.

As to right click protection, bah:
http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2008/07/04/right-click-protection-and-image-security/

Don't rely on it. Use it, but don't solely rely on it.

CynthiaM

Andy wrote:

Googlebot sees a whole different view of your site than you do - so don't worry about that.

As to right click protection, bah:
http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2008/07/04/right-click-protection-and-image-security/

Don't rely on it. Use it, but don't solely rely on it.

What's Googlebot?

I'm aware of all of the right clicking protection and usually block the display of the original and larger images. Smugmug is better than other sights in this regard. I have friends with sites on Betterphoto and I think they would be surprised to know that if you disable javascript, on Betterphoto it will disable their right click protection. But if you try to right click in SM with js disabled, you get an error message telling you that you have to have js enabled. Nice feature.

But what about searching if gallereis are forced to slideshow? Will search sites still find you?

BTW, good to "see" you up and about.

Regards,
Cynthia

Andy

CynthiaM wrote:

What's Googlebot?

Google. It sees a totally different view of your site than you show - it sees what is important for Google

I'm aware of all of the right clicking protection and usually block the display of the original and larger images. Smugmug is better than other sights in this regard. I have friends with sites on Betterphoto and I think they would be surprised to know that if you disable javascript, on Betterphoto it will disable their right click protection. But if you try to right click in SM with js disabled, you get an error message telling you that you have to have js enabled. Nice feature.

But what about searching if gallereis are forced to slideshow? Will search sites still find you?

BTW, good to "see" you up and about.

Regards,
Cynthia

I don't like forcing in general - leave it up to the viewer. Still, google will see your stuff even iff you are forced to slideshow, like I explained above

thanks for the well wishes!

CynthiaM

Andy (or anyoene else)

Going back to my original question. This friend of mine is concerned about the security of her images. She would be setting this up primarily for friends and family. So if she were to force a gallery to sideshow, what does this mean with regard to security and the hackability for one to be able to get to her original images in the event someone other than friend or family made their way to her site??

Opps

CynthiaM wrote:

Andy (or anyoene else)

Going back to my original question. This friend of mine is concerned about the security of her images. She would be setting this up primarily for friends and family. So if she were to force a gallery to sideshow, what does this mean with regard to security and the hackability for one to be able to get to her original images in the event someone other than friend or family made their way to her site??

If they can see the site (they've managed to get pass password protection etc), they can access the pictures. Even if they can't download the images they can always make a screendump of the pictures.

ivar

Opps wrote:

If they can see the site (they've managed to get pass password protection etc), they can access the pictures. Even if they can't download the images they can always make a screendump of the pictures.

... so make sure to watermark the images

jfriend

CynthiaM wrote:

Andy (or anyoene else)

Going back to my original question. This friend of mine is concerned about the security of her images. She would be setting this up primarily for friends and family. So if she were to force a gallery to sideshow, what does this mean with regard to security and the hackability for one to be able to get to her original images in the event someone other than friend or family made their way to her site??

Cynthia, if you turn off access to originals in gallery settings, nobody other than the site owner can get to originals. This is secure. If you limit the size of the images that display on the web in gallery settings to something like XL, same thing. Nobody other than the site owner can get to the sizes you don't permit on the web. This is secure.

As for the sizes that you do allow on the web, anyone can get to them whether they are displayed in flash or plain browser because one can always just take a screen shot and then save the screen shot to disk. Flash provides no more protection against screen shots than plain browser images. I would not suggest using flash because someone thinks it is more secure. There are some browser sleuthing techniques that will not work in flash, but there are flash sleuthing techniques that will not work in a browser too. If the images are available for display, then anyone who knows what they are doing can get them.

As others have said, you either have to limit the size of display to something you don't mind if someone takes (because they can't make a decent print out of it) or you need to put a watermark on it that discourages undesired uses or you need to just not worry about some occasional theft and optimize your site for honest viewers.

CynthiaM

Opps, Ivar & John,
Thanks for your responses. Always helpful and always appreciated. And by the way, Happy Holidays!