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Regarding the Mirror Avatar Code Issue. |
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Ah, okay. Hearing about the code (and also seeing the code) frequently must have annoyed nearly every Gaia user on this site. I don't blame them. Seeing new users and some older users alike freaking out over seeing their own avatar in someone else's signature or post... Of course it will cause some confusion and fear. Heck, it even got me... for a few seconds. So I did the following:
I right-clicked the picture, clicked Properties in Firefox, and it showed me the URL with export.php and a user ID, which I assumed to be useless at first... until today.
Anyway, I went to the Questions and Assistance forum and saw a few posts regarding the avatar code. It was stated that it is considered exploiting a glitch and was against the rules to the point that it was a bannable offense. More than four mods confirm it. Don't tell me to post links; use the Gaia search function, it's working this time.
It is a glitch because the code was originally intended to export your own avatar to save it to the hard disk. It was not meant to display as an image in any way as an URL. Of course, some people will say otherwise, but they are wrong. Every call to export the users' own avatars uses some of Gaia's bandwidth, along with the Valentine's Day event going on, we have some serious lag going on here. If you don't get it, here:
Event + Exporting Avy Code = gonk
As if the events weren't lagging Gaia enough. That code loads images every time that URL is called, since avatars are not cached by your browser at all. Do you know how much bandwidth images in general uses? An average of 15KB for an avy, times 20 different Gaia users visiting a thread that uses this exploit, equals 300KB of daily bandwidth. Not much for Gaia, huh?
But 15KB, times 60,000 different Gaia users visiting a thread that uses this exploit, equals 900,000 KB, or nearly 900 MB (!) of Gaia's daily bandwidth in just a few seconds. gonk x2! And it's even worse, since over 130,000 users use Gaia almost every day.
Code recreation is too easy. Way too easy. xp The devs should fix this, though. The avatar in the Export tab should not be a link. You can already right-click the avatar and save the image that way.
Funny to see the code for myself (again), a Gaia user's ID was embedded inside the URL, which led me to this profile: http://www.gaiaonline.com/profiles/?u=5058166
neutral The user also changed the sig because the mod disabled it earlier. The journal entry: http://www.gaiaonline.com/journal/?mode=view&post_id=17976631
She inadvertently exploited a glitch and didn't know it at all.
 Ami Sapphire · Wed Feb 13, 2008 @ 10:02pm · 0 Comments |
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