Is "background-image: url..."

[tchadoobo]

in Akiba messages really a good thing?

From what I see so far every link posted in a message seems to be forwarded to google
("url("//www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=...download-link..."), to load a favicon/background image that never exists (I'm no html expert) when a users browser loads a message?

Can google learn everything about links posted here (who and when) and also profile every user, even for restricted boards?

 

[C00Lzero]

please explain where you have seen this?
i can't reproduce this.

do you mean in emails or "Conversations" on the board?

 

[tchadoobo]

Sorry, you are right.

I think it's a Firefox issue.
If you view source of a message of any of the Direct Download Forums everything is fine.

However if you select all download links of such a message and use context menu "View selection source" then Firefox seems to add that "background-image:..." code for every link of the selection.

So it is probably a non-issue as long as such a code selection isn't run as a http request.

 

[C00Lzero]

ah!
i've found this.

this is due to a plugin that will show the domain-favicons infront of the url.
this will only trigger a loading of the favicon from the google-caching servers.

Thus it's not a problem.
the links are posted for public, so the google-bot already knows the links. And moreover, google don't delete links, this is done by speical crawlers and manually reporting.
They will fill a report and then google can remove the sites from it's search - nothing more
though nothing to worry.