Hotlinking issues - please read

Hotlinking is the practice of generating something like an avatar pic or smileys directly from another website. The ProBoards Support board has recently had a thread where a forum administrator complained that the whole forum was getting pop-ups with potentially malicious intent:  "Click here to solve the problem" etc. After a lot of analysis and checking it emerged that the cause of this was some forum members hotlinking to a site that had a number of vulnerabilities, and had been  used as a carrier for this kind of malware.

Hotlinking isn't recommended for this reason, and also because all the time that avatar pic is working online in this forum it is using up bandwidth in the site where it is hosted. It is a kind of theft. What is suggested is that you download the pic as a .jpg or .png file and save it to your home drive, then upload the avatar from there. Alternatively you can save the same kind of image file to a cloud host, such as imgur or photobucket, and make the link from the forum to your own account on the host.

I'm not aware of any problems with this forum, and not many members have their own avatars, let alone personalised smileys, but I would ask you to check and take action to comply. Note also the same problem can occur if you upload any text or designs into your Signature. In the words of the old desk sergeant on Hill Street Blues: "Let's be careful out there"

Any queries, please PM me and I'll be happy to help.