How to prevent original photos from being downloaded

imajica

Wheb i share an image using the embedded option and then choose size... .lets say i select X5 as my size. The link with the file name looks something like... https://......./X5/i-rppBhvb-X5.jpg Which is what i want to share... but all anyone needs to do is change the link to https://......./O/i-rppBhvb.jpg and they can download the full res photo. How can i prevent this? If i generate a new link for the original, the stuff before the /x5/ is different.. but i can still take my original link and change a few letters and it is available to anyone who knows that trick.

How do i prevent that? I want the original size to be available to me, but if i send someone a link, i don't want them to access the original by simply changing a few letters.

i am doing this from an unlisted gallery, so it is not like the people can go to the gallery and download it from there or even view the gallery.

Thanks

Richard

I remember worrying about this same possibility years ago, but IIRC, you could alter the link but SmugMug would only serve your largest permitted size, though it didn't give a message or anything. So check what you actually get that way. Also, make sure you're not logged in to SmugMug as the account owner, who can always get originals. Hopefully someone with more current experience will comment.

imajica

I only know about that trick because someone who is not a SmugMug user told me about it. I thought I was sharing lower-resolution stuff, but he was altering the link to download the full-size version all the time.

The largest size is the original size because sometimes I want to share some full-resolution photos with some people, but in others, I want only to share lower-resolution versions.

So it appears that the only way to deal with this is to set the max download size as X5 and then I won't be able to share full-resolution photos unless I upload them to another gallery. Is that correct? I wish that SmugMug would fix things so that something like that would not be necessary

denisegoldberg

The only way to prevent access to the original sized image is to disallow access to originals.

https://www.smugmughelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/18212607353108-Protect-my-images

imajica

the problem with that is sometimes i want to share them. But at the same time, if i disable originals, the person can change the link for the 4k version or whatever is just below original. So i am no further ahead. It would be ideal if SmugMug would create truly different links for all sizes so people cannot cheat and download the larger sizes. Granted 90% wont know about it, but for those that do...