Forums » Smalltalk » wierd image

What is this thing?! o.o

Ah, it looks like a sprite from a game (or an image drawn to mimic the good ol' 16-bit games). Where did you find it, kat?

it keeps randomly popping up and replacing images or gifs i link on site. i've seen it do the same to others as well

In that case, what we're seeing is probably because you're directly linking ("hot linking" is the term, I believe) from the original site to this one (or elsewhere). A lot of sites don't like people doing this because it devours their bandwidth, so when someone hotlinks, there might be a code in place to change the image to something less consuming as "punishment" to the viewers & whoever tried to show it off elsewhere; punishment might be too strong of a word here, admittedly, but it's the only one coming to mind.

Copper is correct that sometimes people replace images when you hotlink to them. However, you say you've seen it do the same to others as well.

Which images are being changed for you though? Can you quote the posts or codes that you use? This is an icon (forum icon from what I've Googled) so it's super weird that you're getting it with images that OTHER people post, plus this isn't usually the kind of image you see when someone bans hotlinking from their site. (It's usually some kind of banner telling you it's not okay to hotlink)

There are an additional 2 possibilities:

1. You need to clear your cache and cookies in your browser. Maybe something is messing up and replacing cached images randomly.

2. You're infected with malware which can change images or create links that aren't there. In that case I recommend installing Malwarebytes Antimalware and running a scan.

This will forever be what I picture Edward (Wizard's OC) looking like if he were thrown into an old western theme.

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Sometimes I have a similar issue but the entire image and link that I posted suddenly erases. I realized that I was only using a temporary URL from the site I got the image from. Maybe this might help?