When a user embeds an image to a server that attempts to block requests with http referrer headers, other users will not be able to see it. Also, as a privacy/security concern, it would be nice not to reveal a person's chat website by leaking the referer out to different sites.
Case in point where a website doesn't take kindly to requests with an HTTP Referrer Header field and will send a Redirect to their homepage.
# this will send a redirect
curl -D - --header "Referer: http://chat.com" http://www.impawards.com/1993/posters/look_whos_talking_now.jpg
vs
# this will give you the actual image
curl -D - http://www.impawards.com/1993/posters/look_whos_talking_now.jpg
Possible solutions:
proxy through the server (costly on the server)
use someone elses proxy like senchas - every image could be prefixed with this:
When a user embeds an image to a server that attempts to block requests with http referrer headers, other users will not be able to see it. Also, as a privacy/security concern, it would be nice not to reveal a person's chat website by leaking the referer out to different sites.
Case in point where a website doesn't take kindly to requests with an HTTP Referrer Header field and will send a Redirect to their homepage.
Possible solutions:
use someone elses proxy like senchas - every image could be prefixed with this:
http://src.sencha.io/http://www.impawards.com/1993/posters/look_whos_talking_now.jpg
I'm curious if you know any other services like src.sencha.io that provide similar services...