# What we protect, and what we cannot

Photos and videos here are handled so that copying them is harder and a copy points back to one account. Four things do that work. None of them stops a camera, and the last part of this page says so plainly.

## What happens when you open a photo

When you ask to see a photo or a video, we check right then that you are allowed it. If you are, we make a link for you that works for a few minutes and hand you that. Your device fetches the file with that link. When the minutes are up the link stops working, whether you used it or not. Nothing is left behind that somebody else could pick up and follow, because the link was made for you, for that moment, and never existed before you asked.

## Every link expires, quickly

A link is good for a few minutes and then it is dead. Send it to somebody and it has almost certainly stopped working before they open it. Change any part of it and it stops working immediately, because the link is signed and a changed link does not match its own signature. That is what stops a link being passed around a group chat and stops one being kept in a bookmark for later.

## A file has no address of its own

There is no plain web address for a file here that you could copy, paste or guess. Files are not reached by a path at all. Each one is only ever reached through a link built for one person at one moment, so there is no lasting address for anybody to share, index or come back to. It also means a file cannot be found by trying addresses until one works.

## A copy carries the account it was shown to

What you are shown is marked with the account it was shown to. The mark does not stop anybody copying anything, and it is not meant to. It means that if a file turns up somewhere it should not be, it can be traced back to the one account it was handed to, rather than to everybody who might have seen it. That is the difference between knowing something leaked and knowing where it leaked from.

## Being allowed is checked every single time

We check that you are allowed to see something on every request, not once at the start and then trusted. So when access ends it ends at once: a link that worked this morning can stop working this afternoon, and a file you could see yesterday can be closed today. It also means nobody keeps access by holding on to something they were given earlier.

## If something of yours turns up elsewhere

Tell us, and give us where you saw it. Because a copy carries the account it was shown to, we can often say which account was handed that exact file, and act on that account. What we cannot do is take the copy down from somewhere we do not control. That part is between you and whoever is hosting it, and in many countries the law is on your side there.

## Nothing here stops a camera

Anybody can point a phone at a screen and photograph what is on it. No website can stop that, and neither can we, so we are not going to tell you that copying is impossible here. What is true is that copying is harder here than it is in most places, and that a copy points at one account. Please post on that basis: assume a copy of anything you put anywhere exists somewhere you cannot reach.

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https://kinkeu.com/zh-TW/protection/