this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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Privacy

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Suggesting: Embedding images and files (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Zerush@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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Every time when a YouTube video is embedded in Lemmy, a bot appears, suggesting to use Front-end Piped (or another) instead of YT, which is certainly recommended, due to YouTube's inherent privacy concerns.

However, then it is not understandable, why in the case of images Imgur links are happily allowed, which is infinitely worse in terms of privacy, which shares user and usage data with the worst existing advertising companies, which makes it in little less than spyware.

As a suggestion I present 2 alternatives, which in addition to, as EU products, strictly adhere to the GDPR standard and even more.

As the main FileCoffee service, this, apart from images, supports ALL types of files, whether multimedia, video, documents, presentations or texts. Supports 15 MB/file and with optional registration to also use it as a personal host (100% free with mail, password) up to 30 MB/file, encrypted. Inclusions script one click for ShareX on Windows or MagicCap on Linux or Mac

The second is vgy.me, also privacy oriented, but supports only images, encryption, 20 MB/image, EXIF Data are removed, API for web pages.

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[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think it shouldn't be managed on lemmy side but on the users' side, e.g. on your device/browser. Libredirect can automatically redirect to those sites, not on just lemmy, but everywhere on the internet: https://libredirect.github.io/

Another problem is these alternative frontends relatively frequently disappear. If you post a link to a random instance, it's quite possible that 5 years later the instance will be down, and the link won't work at all. Libredirect addon updates the urls of working instances, so it will work later. There is even a button in the addon to switch to another instance, so you can find the best available site.

Edit: I misunderstood what are these sites, they are not imgur frontends but separate image host websites, so this comment is just about the first paragraph.

[–] inspxtr@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

while I like and personal use frontends, it happens quite often that instances disappear after a while, especially those from non-popular domains. One benign scenario in 5 years is that they just don’t work, eg domains expire or abandoned.

But another possible scenario in 5 years of these invalid links is that they can be hijacked by malicious actors, to use as honeypots and what-not. For example, random person searching for a review in 5 years time may stump upon them.

Are there ways to safeguard against this? Or is this not a concern at all?

Plus, front-ends or alternatives, these instances (eg lemmy itself) many times have weird names. It is often off-putting to see new weird ones and to ponder whether they are trustworthy, especially if there keeps to be new ones every few months.

I think we’re told to be wary of weird-looking links as a general internet starter pack, in our jobs, … And the frontends/alternatives links can often be at odds with this mentality. Whenever I share an invidious link, eg yewtube, to my friends, they are usually worried and uneasy, even after I try to explain.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

FileCoffee and vgy.me are not frontends, they are independent European cloudservices since several years, FileCoffee since 2018, nothing to do with imgur. But yes, I think that this also should be managed by the Lemmy admins. Anyway its also an advice to all users with this alternatives to avoid this imgurcrap

[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah, ok, I misunderstood, because you started with the piped bot, and that's totally different from this services. So you are not writing about imgur frontends, but for uploaders to upload their images elsewhere. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I just don't like that bot.

But for embedding images, your privacy scan is not relevant, it's just the home page of imgur you scanned. If you share the direct link to the image, no tracker downloaded, only the image. Just rightclick on the image and 'Copy image link'. If you paste this link to this privacy inspector it says no trackers, as it's not a webpage, just an image. They will know your ip and useragent, but that's all, no extra tracking:

Of course it's better to support more privacy respecting services, and thank you for the recommendations, but it's not as big issue as it sounds. It doesn't affect the viewers of the images just the uploaders.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Vgy delete the EXIF data, Imgur dont and know in any moment where its images are. It's not only the homepage of Imgur, it's among others the tracking pixel from facebook and the keylogging of TowerData which came with the sharelink which they know and the image. See the complete list of the companies which receive data from Imgur. It's one of the worst list I've ever seen. Thanks, even better GDrive. Blacklight can only scan websites, not files, for these you need other tools to analyze it.

[–] hellfire103@sopuli.xyz 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It might also be good to have a bot that links to Imgin or Rimgo, which are privacy-respecting frontends for Imgur.

[–] Tanoh@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

No, we don't need more bots spaming. It should be a client option instead.

[–] starman@programming.dev 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Replace Mb in your post with MB.

  • Mb = megabits
  • MB = megabytes
  • 1MB = 8 Mb

Edit: since some people say that it should be MiB, here is text from file.coffee website:

For those without a file.coffee account can upload files that are up to 15 megabytes in size.

As you can see, megabytes, not mebibytes

[–] GigglyBobble@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Well, acshually, bit doesn't have a metric symbol and 'b' is defined as barn. So Mb would be a megabarn.

Edit: And to be even more nitpicking: If the image size is defined as binary, it should be MiB (mebibyte) since "mega" is defined as base 10.

[–] johnnyjayjay@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

No. "Mi" is just a different prefix than "M" and it doesn't matter what units you attach them to. Why would it? It's just a multiplication with 2^20 or 10^6, respectively.

[–] GigglyBobble@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No.

Where's the contradiction? Yes, it's just a different prefix but it results in a different number. What I meant to adress is that very often people write MB/megabytes (10⁶ = 1,000,000 bytes) but actually mean MiB/mebibytes (2²⁰ = 1,048,576 bytes). RAM vendors possibly most prominently.

[–] johnnyjayjay@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is no contradiction. But there is also nothing contradictory or wrong with the unit MB. If I say "this is 100MB", maybe I just... mean that? No reason to correct me.

[–] GigglyBobble@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

But there is also nothing contradictory or wrong with the unit MB.

And I didn't say that. Admittedly, the constraint "If the image size is defined as binary" probably could've been expressed better (I'm not a native speaker). File sizes are usually calculated in binary units (at least by Windows and the Linux distros I know - even though Windows continues to claim those are megabytes and Linux adopted the standardized units) and I'd bet that's the case for file.coffee, too.

Oh, well, I'm pretty sure we're not really disagreeing anyway. So let's conclude with the obligatory relevant xkcd.

[–] shorty66@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

2^20 = 1.048.576 ≠ 1.000.000 = 10^6

Ki Mi Gi Prefixes are for powers of two, K M G for powers of ten.

Of course you can choose whatever prefix you prefer, but when talking about storage or anything digital, we usually mean the power of two series. For that matter it's better to be explicit instead of assuming everybody knows.

[–] johnnyjayjay@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I never claimed that 2^20 is the same as 10^6. In fact, I explicitly said that they are different. But if I use M on purpose, it is not a correction to just replace it with Mi, for that same reason.

[–] shorty66@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

True, i misread your first post.

[–] starman@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

I know about binary prefixes, but file.coffee website uses mega prefix, not mebi

[–] BlueBockser@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Oh you mean MiB as in mebibel?

[–] GigglyBobble@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ha, good one! Got me interested, how the standards bodies handle something like that. Found this in the Wikipedia article for byte:

The unit symbol for the byte is specified in IEC 80000-13, IEEE 1541 and the Metric Interchange Format[10] as the upper-case character B.

In the International System of Quantities (ISQ), B is the symbol of the bel, a unit of logarithmic power ratio named after Alexander Graham Bell, creating a conflict with the IEC specification. However, little danger of confusion exists, because the bel is a rarely used unit. It is used primarily in its decadic fraction, the decibel (dB), for signal strength and sound pressure level measurements, while a unit for one-tenth of a byte, the decibyte, and other fractions, are only used in derived units, such as transmission rates.

Somewhat disappointing. "There's a conflict but it's fine".

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks, sorry, edited

[–] starman@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No problemo, thanks for correction

[–] Crul@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks, I've been looking for an imgur altenative. I'll try those suggestions.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You will love it, above all FileCoffee. With the integration in ShareX Desktop and the ShareX complement extension for Browsers, it's pure magic, with this you can capture, upload and share anything with a mouse click, giving you the FileCoffee link

https://file.coffee/u/OHztWPXGD9Mfd7RmC-zKB.png

[–] Crul@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Yes ShareX is the best and most complete screenshot and screencast tool out there, the only lack is it's Windows only.

[–] Antimutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

FileCoffee just refused this picture, citing file type, that shows all the javas it uses. Carbonads; cloudflareinsights; google-analytics. How about pixeldrain.com@lemmy.fornaxian.tech ?

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pixeldrain is also a good alternative, but it don't show this 1.jxl image too. maybe it isn't an image.

[–] Antimutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's not the site - it's the browser, which may need help firefox or chrome.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The image isn't shown in any of my browsers, screenshot is made in the Vivaldi browser, in Firefox I see only the name 1.jxl without the broken image icon, in Otter only a black screen where i've to go to the homepage URL to see the Pixeldrain page, same in EDGE. Seems more that it is something wrong with the image and not a browser problem. Apart of this, I never had problems to view any kind of images in the browser.

[–] Antimutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The description of the Firefox plug-in explains why. Want a pic of the pic??

Edit: Next you'll be telling me your browser cannot open a simple jpg when, if you download it, decent graphics software will open it just fine. 😏

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In your first post of Pixeldrain ther wasent an 1.avif file, but one with the extension jxl and a broken image icon. Now you say it's a simple jpg, which naturally can be opened even with the obsolete paint. Anyway, I don't want to download an image or file to see it, here we speak about image sharing with embed code to insert in Lemmy or other sites, like I do it with the screenshots I make, the direct link of files from File Coffee open the file/image in a new tab, where you can see it there, without the UI fom the FileCoffee or VGY https://file.coffee/u/rLLXM247jRr4mIuzQwavr.webm

[–] Antimutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

In your first post of Pixeldrain ther wasent an 1.avif file, but one with the extension jxl and a broken image icon. Now you say it’s a simple jpg, which naturally can be opened even with the obsolete paint.

Nope. I never said that. But I did put before you a challenge to open that, perfectly functional, jpg in your browser...the one you've never had problems with when opening images.

I don’t want to download an image or file to see it

Nor do I and I don't. As the second screen capture, saved as an avif, showed you: my Firefox handles jxl just fine due to the add-in. And beta versions, like Firefox Nightly, handle the format natively.

here we speak about image sharing with embed code to insert in Lemmy or other sites, like I do it with the screenshots I make,

Me too. But I found FileCoffee didn't support my first jxl screen capture of the NoScript report of FileCoffee's javas use. A disappointment, when you had said it "supports ALL types of files".

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Would rather a bot link to the image itself not an album containing a single image, but I do like the sound of the 2 alternatives.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Links of Vgy and FileCoffee only point to the image or file you want to share, the albums you create in these with an account are private and are usefull as backup. Shareable only images/files which you select.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Filecoffe and vgy.me doesn't work well with mobile for uploading. I can't drag and drop. The same problem is with Imgur anyway, but why isn't there a service to just select a file from storage or URL and upload?

Edit, Nevermind it works when opening it in the external browser.

[–] Crul@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Do you know if it's possible to upload a picture from a URL? I didn't find the option in any of them.