What is?
Image Web Hosting
An image web hosting service allows individuals to upload images or digital photographs to an Internet website. The image web host will then store the image or digital photograph onto its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that image.
Digital Photograph and Image Types
The same technology that allows images and digital photographs to be shared can be used for other electronic image formats. This can include computer-generated art or scans of hand-drawn artwork or photographic prints just as easily as it can include digital photographs. Even though “image sharing” is a more general term and would include photo sharing as a subset of the available options, the term “photo sharing”is more widely known.
Image Revenue models
Image and photo sharing websites can be broadly broken up into two groups: websites that offer photo sharing for free and websites that charge consumers directly to the image web hosting provider to share photos.
Of the image hosting websites that offer free image or photo sharing, most can be broken up into advertising-supported media plays and online photo finishing websites, where photo sharing is a vehicle to sell prints or other merchandise.
Paid image hosting websites typically offer subscription-based services directly to consumers and dispense with advertisements and sometimes the sale of other goods.
These designations are not hard and fast and some subscription websites have a limited free version. Consumers can share their photos directly from their home computers over high speed connections through peer-to-peer photo sharing using applications. Peer-to-peer photo sharing often carries a small one-time cost for the software. Some websites allow you to post your photos online and they will then project the image onto famous buildings during special events, while other websites let you insert photos into digital postcards, slide shows and photo albums and send them to others.
Image Privacy and Security
Online theft and photo fraud have become major issues in the photo and image sharing market. The United States Ad Council recently created an advertising campaign to warn users of the dangers of posting personal photos to public websites. Recently, some people have begun to lift usernames and passwords from users of various image sharing and photo sharing websites by turning to secondary sign-on pages called phishing.
Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. It often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose URL and look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) with strong cryptography for server authentication it is practically difficult to detect that the website is fake. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users, and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.
Colo is fully aware of phishing and other privacy or security theft tactics and takes every precaution against it. Colo is a full service web hosting and networks operation center and provides its clients a wide variety of secure web hosting and server services. You can read further about Colo’s Web Hosting Features here, request a call back (top right) or call toll free at 1-866-316-2656 and we will help you select the services that best meets your needs.