Problems viewing images/bandwidth thief showing up instead?

Hello,

I’ve received e-mails a couple of times regarding the problem that my Hotlinking images show up instead of the proper Vin Diesel images. I can easily imagine you going WTF?! and wondering if you took a wrong turn somewhere down the internet highway. You didn’t, you just very very likely have Norton Anti-Virus software installed.

You have probably noticed I’ve mentioned the problem with Norton before; on the frontpage of http://vindieselgallery.net and also at the bottom of the gallery:
The sites are protected from Hotlinking. If you have trouble viewing the images on this site, please disable your ‘Norton Firewall Anti-privacy’ function.
Before the problem I had with Norton was that no images showed up at all, the site was blanked and people wondered if I’d removed all pics. Now, Norton apparently acts different. The protection and hotlinking you can read about here as I’ve created a page with information about it.

Norton on the other hand is an issue all in itself. A very annoying one. My site isn’t the only one affected by this - http://www.roleofthedie.com/norton.html - has a very informative site regarding Norton and how to fix the problem:
- Open Norton Personal Firewall, click Options, and select Personal Firewall.
- Click the Web Content tab.
- Click Add Site, type in *.vindieselgallery.net, then click Ok.
- Highlight *.vindieselgallery.net in the list of sites and then uncheck Use Default Settings on the Information About Visited Sites section and set it to Permit.
- Click Ok at the bottom to close the Norton Personal Firewall window.
- Refresh your browser.

The workaround for Norton Internet Security is a little different, but much simpler:
- Open Norton Internet Security, then click Privacy Control.
- Click Configure.
- Click Custom.
- Uncheck Enable Browser Privacy.
- After closing out NIS, refresh your browser.

I don’t have Norton as I hate it with a passion, so I cannot try it for myself. Instead I hope this works, or just switch to use AVG, or Avast , and then combine it with a good firewall.

Anyone still having problems are of course welcomed to contact me.

Regards,
Ms M - webmaster