Who took this time to change their avatar?

[ConradH]

Due to change mine just because, but haven't had any good ideas yet.

 

[sKiZo]

Can't improve on perfection ... <G>

 

[grillebilly]

You guys roped me into it. Brand spanking new. Pun intended.

 

[Wildcat]

I'm hoping we get Gravatars. It's an option that can be turned on. (Also saves server room and bandwidth. )

Animated avatars can't work in this forum--due to the multiple sizes and the way they are resized after uploading (saved as a different file format), animations are lost.

 

[sKiZo]

Gravatars would be a step back from an upgrade that's mostly aimed at improving site and user security. Their database is eminently hackable, on a par with TapATalk, which has already been disabled here for similar concerns.

 

[Wildcat]

Gravatars would be a step back from an upgrade that's mostly aimed at improving site and user security. Their database is eminently hackable, on a par with TapATalk, which has already been disabled here for similar concerns.

Gravatar is essentially a third-party image hosting service based on a user's email. We use it in a couple dozen web properties I manage (or administrate) with no issues whatsoever, including a couple of very high volume sites. It is a lot less risky to members than belonging to any social media networks, which have far greater concerns such as user data security and privacy. From XenForo's standpoint, it simply hashes the email address and requests the matching Gravatar from their server.

A hacker would not gain much getting into Gravatar's database--what, a list of email addresses and some images? A small fraction have used it as an identity service of sorts (as you can optionally fill in some user information). Beyond that, it's a rather low-payoff, low-profile service to be hacking into. Anyone really concerned about the very low threat level can use a throwaway free email account somewhere to associate with it.

All sites and all databases are hackable. Even AK. Even all of the sites I manage. Ask Target and Home Depot how the handling of credit/debit card numbers worked out for them. Security is an ongoing maintenance task for me, very time consuming and often frustrating. And often, on my dime.

Now, Tapatalk? That was a total hack. We dumped it three years ago across all sites. Other admins have been slowly getting rid of it also. That was a wide open back door (due to their poor coding, which bypassed XenForo's privacy and security features) that was ripe for abuse. The product also introduced new features that were never debugged, and support was nearly non-existent. Complaints or bug reports mysteriously vanished from their support forum also. It is rather comical also--they perform damage control once a year, posting in a handful of forums around the Internet saying how support was going to improve over the coming year. For members who still request Tapatalk, I have staff inform them of the security issues to our server and the privacy of their user data.

 

[luvvinvinyl]

I hear from lots of members about having lost animated avatars. This bears investigating..

 

[Mystic]

Not changed nor tweaked. The same Fury Leader as seen through the eyes of Harry Caray ca. August 1988.

 

[Wildcat]

I hear from lots of members about having lost animated avatars. This bears investigating..

PM on the way...

 

[splicerphil]

oops

 

[splicerphil]

I hear from lots of members about having lost animated avatars. This bears investigating..

Any word on your investigatiion??