Form of avatar URLs
When I started AVrAmTAR.com service, URLs were in form of http://avatars.avramtar.com/id-USERID.gif, where USERID was ID (number) of user in database. Then, a friend told me that anyone can just change (e.g. increase) ID number and see others’ avatars. I thought it was not a problem, as avatars are made to be seen, not? But again, someone might not like the fact that others can see his avatars. Then I’ve slightly modified system, so now your e-mail address is shown instead of ID. However, this also might be a problem, if spambots become able to recognize that user-AT-domain-DOT-tld is actually email adress (just replace -AT- with at (@) and -DOT- with dot (.)). I’ve came up with idea that I can change URLs to e.g. http://avatars.avramtar.com/avatar-MD5_HASH_OF_EMAIL.gif
I think that form of URLs will be the best choice, as other users can’t decrypt MD5 hash and therefore they can’t see your email address, nor your user ID. I will probably make changes to AVrAmTAR to get these links, and as I do not have much free time, until I find some time to do this, I want to see what other users think about this? Please vote:
December 21st, 2007 at 19:03
December 21st, 2007 at 19:23