The most recent alert occurred when the Eluts website got hacked and hit with Malware. Someone had a link to a page on the Eluts website - a perfectly innocent and acceptable thing to do - and it was that link that set off the alert since it led to a hacked page. In order to keep the site and y'all safe we did delete the link and (because we are new to this sort of thing and over cautious) the whole post (it was an older sales post or I probably would not have done that).
What does this mean to you? Nothing really except that if a link you have posted in a thread suddenly disappears we probably got an alert about it and removed it to keep everyone safe. Once the website on the other end is made safe again you can certainly put the link back.
Hopefully this will be a rare occurrance unless someone out there is on a dollsite hacking rampage
You may now return to your regularly scheduled Mayhem.
(shakey shakey)
original post:
Today we received a security alert notice that this site had been tagged as containing malware according to Google's malware search. After investigations it looks like there is no actual malware, but someone hotlinked to an outside image that was no longer there and that link opened us up to a potential security issue.
We couldn't be 100% sure which image it was, but we deleted a few potentially related ones, so if an image you posted suddentlly went away I apologize, but we did this to protect the forum, not as punishment.
For those unsure of what hotlinking is here's the penny definition. To hotlink is to copy the URL of a photo/image directly from the website posting it, and using that as your link for the image here in the forum. This practice is considered unethical because it causes the parent website of the image to absorb all of the bandwidth traffic. Always put images - even if you are snitching them from a doll website - on your own website or image site (like Photobucket, Flicker, etc...) and link to that. This protects all of us from potential hacking/malware!
Thanks for reading this - and to whoever posted the image (and honestly, I have no clue I wasn't the one who found it and I didn't ask), no harm, no foul just be sure to save it to your own photo spot before reposting it
I apparently hotlink all the time, I had no idea it was a no-no!! I didn't even know it had a name. I'm so sorry!! 
Part of the problem is that I've been using a mac lately (my own lapytop died... with some help from me... *cough*), and I still can't figure out some stuff that was so simple on my windows. I know mac is supposed to be superior and even easier, but I'm just not used to it.
