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Every once in a while something catches my eye and sticks with me for months.
I was visiting new and exciting deviant pages when I noticed something curious: more and more members were inserting scripts from external sites into their layout.  One wouldn't think that would be a problem: they offer a feature that DA doesn't.  Well, you and I would be wrong.  Not only do they impose their own privacy policy on DA users who innocently visit these pages, they collect data about DA vistiors right under DA's collective noses. It is only a short leap from that to spreading malware via these scripts.  Aside from the very real dangers and invasion of privacy, there are asthetic reasons as well.  As the boundaries and restrictions to sound and functional layouts are removed, DA becomes another unreadable Myspace catastrophy.

Similarly, one expects to find an abundance of self promotion on this site. It the reason the site flourishes, but today, an employer went too far when it gave an artist conditional permission to display a work only if it carried external advertising for an unrelated product.  Listen, I understand the realities of commercial business, but the revenues for that advertisement were for the external website.  I would expect and welcome the ad there. However, I became a member here to remove the ads from my viewing experience.  The aforementioned ad wasn't even for the sponsoring site, the artist or an artist's product, it was for laundry aids.  Was this too gleaning information about me without my consent?

Which brings me to my closing points:  Internal and external links.  With all the flashy scripting going on already, how hard would it be to force alt information for links on hover?  Like the full URL for instance.  Secondly, any user baiting another into clicking a link to perform  a function blindly should be disciplined.  Lastly, the DA Guy on external link intercepts shouldn't be giving the peace sign happily, he should be clad in armor to battle the monsters of the internet.

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