Because of issues with embedding pictures from external sources there were a few issues that cropped up where the site where the actual image was hosted was flagged for Malware, Spyware, Virus's etc... and thus if someone looked at the post here which had the photo which was actually being pulled from the other site, they would get a warning from their browser or anti virus, making it look like we had an issue here when the issue was the picture was coming from a flagged site.
A few weeks ago we moved over to a new proxy system, so if someone posts a photo with the url going offsite, what now happens is the system downloads that picture from that site... puts it in a temporary directory and scans it for safety and once its deemed safe it makes that photo an attachment served on our server instead of pulling it from the remote server each time its displayed. Thus no more warning messages. Another great thing about this is because the image is now stored on our server, if that website ever goes down or they delete that picture from their site it will remain posted here because it no longer relies on pulling it from their server each time the image is shown.
Now the issue you are describing may be a case of the remote site not allowing us to download and convert the image, which then nothing is shown but this is out of safety. However you may be able to download the file yourself and upload it as an attachment.
For the most part it works the way it should but in cases like this it could add an extra step. But I think keeping the site safe and not having it pop up red flags saying danger danger is important.
A few weeks ago we moved over to a new proxy system, so if someone posts a photo with the url going offsite, what now happens is the system downloads that picture from that site... puts it in a temporary directory and scans it for safety and once its deemed safe it makes that photo an attachment served on our server instead of pulling it from the remote server each time its displayed. Thus no more warning messages. Another great thing about this is because the image is now stored on our server, if that website ever goes down or they delete that picture from their site it will remain posted here because it no longer relies on pulling it from their server each time the image is shown.
Now the issue you are describing may be a case of the remote site not allowing us to download and convert the image, which then nothing is shown but this is out of safety. However you may be able to download the file yourself and upload it as an attachment.
For the most part it works the way it should but in cases like this it could add an extra step. But I think keeping the site safe and not having it pop up red flags saying danger danger is important.