Replies

I don't understand that at all (my fault, not yours).

When requesting an image (or when following a link), a browser normally includes a Referer header as part of the request. It tells the site where the request is coming from. E.g., here's my browser's interaction trying to fetch the picture in question:

http://image62.webshots.com/562/3/29/70/2701329700058374593CAbCdl_fs.jpg

GET /562/3/29/70/2701329700058374593CAbCdl_fs.jpg HTTP/1.1
Host: image62.webshots.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.12) Gecko/20070508 Firefox/1.5.0.12
Accept: image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1912067/posts
Cookie: webshots=1192567743|direct|; siteVisits=5; cookie-test=1; mbox=session#1192567736603-251868#1192570135|PC#1192567736603-251868#1255640275|check#true#1192568335; rsi_ct=2007_10_16:10; MADUCAT=1&1016&10012&10019&10033&10049&10128&10151&10152&10154&10162; skin=blazing; daily=004e82aa0f66dde6cea70a48c7e818a87c3G_x22%7B%3At%7D%7B%3An%7DG_x23%7B%3At%7D%7B%3An%7DG_x6%7B%3At%7Dnull%7B%3An%7DG_x7%7B%3At%7DM%7B%3An%7DG_x1%7B%3At%7Dgarbuck%7B%3An%7DG_x2%7B%3At%7DGeorge%7B%3An%7DG_x3%7B%3At%7D1945-07-15%7B%3An%7DG_x21%7B%3At%7D1969-12-31%7B%3An%7DG_x20%7B%3At%7D%7B%3An%7DG_x9%7B%3At%7D102355703%7B%3An%7D; market=

HTTP/1.x 403 Forbidden
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:07:12 GMT
Server: Apache/2
Content-Length: 246
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=28
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

The request is in black, and the snarky response is in red. The Referer header is bolded.

If I configure my browser to stifle the Referer, the request works. IOW, webshots.com doesn't want people looking at their pictures unless they're actually on the site. They enforce it by checking the Referer.

That's why I figured your browser must have the header disabled. You may also have installed some privacy or security software that configured your browser automatically.

Referer header info lets site owners see how viewers are reaching their site. E.g., if a user landed on a site via a search engine, the Referer text will let the site owner see the search engine query.