"Upload to Imgur": Is the uploaded file public?

I want to upload an image (not an avatar; something else) to a character's description box, but my only options are "from URL" or "upload to Imgur". This is a spot where apparently I can't just upload a file directly from my own machine. I wonder about the privacy of the stuff that gets put on Imgur, because I don't want anyone else to be able to find or download it (materials for playtesting a game to be published, nothing nefarious). What's the deal with Imgur here? Cheers.

I'm pretty sure all Imgur stuff is public (according to their own privacy policy), although not always easy to find. For more private hosting you might want to use something like Google Drive, perhaps? You just need to upload it, make it viewable by link and then convert the link to a direct link.

Anyone who has the URL can view/download the image, but the links are not made public by Imgur. If you post the image in a public thread anyone can find it from there, of course, and anyone who can see it (in a private game) can send the link to anyone else. That is just the nature of the beast.

If you don't trust Imgur, you can host the image anywhere you like (and use the URL option), but the same caveats apply: in order for your players to be able to see it, anyone with the link can see it, so it is only as protected as you keep the link.

If you have to keep things (more) private, you could create named shares on dropbox or google drive, or one drive, or any cloud system, but, for them to only be visible to your players, each player would each need an account for you share it with.

Thanks, that's good advice about Google Drive. I may try that.

Technically nothing uploaded to the web is ever private. Also, upon further research, here is what Imgur says about their non-public images:
If you aren't concerned that someone will manage to generate the link randomly (they are quite short on Imgur, I believe), then it's not much worse than every other hosting site. Though I'd argue that it's much harder to randomly generate a Google Drive link. XD

"and then convert the link to a direct link" -- Hmm, how do I do this for Google Drive? I have sharing set to "Anyone with the link", but when I paste that link into the character's box using "By URL...", I don't see the JPEG; I only see the URL as plain text.

Here is an instruction on HowToGeek - you basically just replace parts of the link. Or you can just use a direct link generator.

Those google drive links are also visible to anyone who has them, so they are not a lot better and probably not worth the effort of making them work. They are longer, but I would not be overly concerned with people brute-forcing imgur urls for this sort of thing.

Using google would only be beneficial if you shared by user/email and not by link.

Screenshots of rulebooks can also be very hard for some to read, if you are going to all this effort, why not just type up the relevant rules as part of the text of the post?

Thanks again. I realize my purposes may seem cryptic.

With how spooky your avatar looks, that's to be expected.

...I can't not point out that it's also a pun then. Because crypt! :P

I use Dropbox for my images and works well when I want to share a pdf or document as well.

For the note, the main reason we don't self host images is the cost. Finding a fair balance for how much space each person can upload is hard, and we already have very limited server space. My persistent goal is to try to keep from monetizing the site and to keep it ad free. We've had conversations about a "premium" tier, which would basically be a donor level, which would include a certain number of uploads, but as there are a lot of options that don't need that, it's way back in priority.

Unless self-hosted images were also tied into permissions and which users could view them, they would still suffer from the 'anyone with the link can view them' issue. So this would not help much in this case (from what I understand of the problem), and would put the GP in danger of recrimination if these images were found, imgur just delete anything that is flagged under DMCA and claim 'user error' :).

Yah, the complications of image hosting are high.

is there a way to delete images from the Gamersplane imgur account that we don't need anymore?

I'm pretty sure there isn't. When we tried to find where they were even posted, I think people failed to find them.