Now you see it, now you don't

[mike-wsm]

I often contribute pics to forums, sometimes I link directly to external sites, sometimes I resize the pics and put them on my own site, and other times I have used pics on photobucket or imageshack. I always check the resulting pages after posting, first on my own laptop at home and then at our local internet cafe.

This week I had a weird problem. I had two direct-linked pics on a single post. Both pics could be seen at home (3 mobile) but only one at the internet cafe (bt landline). So one pic wasn't getting through bt, but, stranger still, it would come down ok as a url, it was only when the url was within img codes that it vanished.

How can this happen? Same website, same post, same isp, same landline, same machine, same browser, and the pic shows ok as a url but not when within image codes. Elsewhere same post views ok.

[Booglebox]

Websites can use mechanisms (other more technical people will have to step in to detail exactly what) to detect and block "hot-linking" direct to content. A different IP address may be the factor that breaks it.

Always upload to a dedicated service e.g. imageshack

[Capetonian]

When I post images to (e.g.) Pprune, I use a link to 'dropbox'. Depending on where I am, sometimes I can see these images, sometimes not, and it can vary from day to day using the same computer on the same network. I assumed it was to do with line speed but I'm no techie!

[Booglebox]

Same thing. I guess Dropbox don't want you hotlinking to stuff that they host i.e. getting something for nothing.

[mike-wsm]

Or perhaps the way that some isps interpret the hotlink makes it unintelligible to dropbox.