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Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Doug's Domain

Doug Vetter, ATP/CFI

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No images while browsing?

Why it happens and how you you can fix it.

Due to increasing abuse and outright theft of content from this site, dvatp.com has been forced to implement controls to protect its copyrighted data and the context in which it is viewed. Unfortunately, these controls are not without side-effects to legitimate readers.

If you cannot see images when browsing the various articles on this site, it is very likely that your browser, personal firewall software (Norton, McAfee, Windows Firewall, etc.), or some upstream system that provides you with Internet access (a firewall or proxy) is stripping the referrer information that is normally transmitted to our server when you access information from this site.

What's "referrer information" and why would it be stripped in the first place?

Referrer information consists of the URL you were visiting when you made the current request (e.g. to display an image). The practice of stripping referrer information is often sold to users as a security feature because it reduces the ability of website administrators to track where you're coming from but, just like the much maligned browser "cookie", referrer information has a legitimate use.

In our case we use it to ensure that the user is viewing documents directly from dvatp.com before we serve the associated picture. This prevents so-called "hotlinking" of our images and discourages any incentive to use the textual content of the site in a manner inconsistent with our policies.

Okay, how do I fix this and see images on your site?

You can fix this in in one of two ways:

Thanks for understanding.