At Sketchfab we take privacy and security very seriously and do our very best to protect your work.
Here are some of the ways in which we secure your content:
- Data served from our site is compressed via a lossy algorithm and original files are never publicly exposed.
- Our team actively monitors and invalidates any unauthorized attempts to access 3D data, such as "rippers".
- Our terms of service strictly forbids any attempt to reverse-engineer Sketchfab content.
While we try as hard as we can to prevent piracy, it's not entirely possible due to the way video cards work. We scramble the data we send to your browser, but once it is sent to your video card it's readable and can be intercepted. Unfortunately, this is true for any process that uses a video card, like games or any other WebGL/WebXR apps. That said, your original model file is never exposed unless you enable downloading. The model we serve to your card is heavily processed and compressed.
In the end, there's always a balance between getting exposure and showing your work vs how sensitive your data is. This is true for all media platforms (like YouTube, Spotify or Netflix).
To add an extra layer of security to your models, you can use Sketchfab Pro - this way you can make your models private (unlisted) and even password-protected.
Comments
24 comments
Hi! Is it possible to have a model another place than Sketchfab computers (for example on my own computer or a company's computer)?
Say company X wants to store a model on its own computers for security reasons. The idea is that customer Y would go on company X's website to view their model using Sketchfab viewer. Is this remotely possible?
@wood_dragon - At the moment, all models must be uploaded to Sketchfab for processing, and we don't license the viewer technology for others to host.
Hi, I am going to use 3D models in the classroom and assign these models to individual students. I would like students to be able to add annotations and text to "their own" models. Is their anyway to do this without giving them my credentials? Assigning a password won't give them permissions right?
@elearning - Hi, sound great. We don't have a system like that yet. The best thing to do is have them create their own accounts or create new accounts yourself for them so you can keep your own credentials safe.
Prejudice a question if the public private model password when I insert it in the wordpress site, a password is required to who wants to see the site in wordpress? in more private links to the model, it is indexed by the engines? thank you very much
@IVAR The password is always required, and the model will not be indexed by search engines.
James,
If I want to make a model available for a certain site e.g (my site) , and someone else embed it to their site, is possible to give direct access to my site but still have the password if somene tries to copy the url?
@brvr - Not at the moment. If you add a password, the password will be required everywhere.
Thank you!
Someone steal models from sketchfab.
Look at this:
https://p3dm.ru/tutorials/ripper/9313-ninja-ripper-and-web-ripping-rus.html
English version:
http://cgig.ru/en/2017/01/ninja-ripper-and-web-ripping-en/
@steplont - Your original files are never exposed unless you enable download. Our viewer serves a compressed version of the mesh. However, once the 3D data reaches your GPU, it is available locally. This is required for our viewer to work. This is really no different than any other media published on the Internet; it's trivial to rip images, audio, and video from most sources. In fact, ripping 3D is harder.
That said, we are working on some features to make such techniques harder. In theory, it's possible to make automatic ripping VERY difficult. However, this would hurt performance and stability of the product. You can follow some more discussion here:
https://forum.sketchfab.com/t/lets-talk-about-security/15789
Is it possible to "livetrack" unauthorized access to certain outputs of WebGL/the viewer and immediately cut access once it's been detected?
@jqw207 We occasionally ban IP addresses of of abusive or spamming users, which blocks their access to the site completely. We also monitor ripping tools that work at the level of the browser / viewer change our code to break them when they are detected.
how to make a modle
how about "Add Watermark" option to prevent easy video recording / screenshoting for reverse-reconstruction of models?
Just found one of my models for sale on turbosquid, AGAIN!!
Twice this has happened! :(
Ive lost faith in sketchfab now and have removed most of my models.
The fundamental weakness of this site is that your model, when viewed, is temporarily downloaded to the graphics card of the viewers device (openGL)
From there it can be extracted using freely available software and then sold on 3d model vendor sites such as turbosquid or cgtrader
Seriously, how can sketchfab expect to create a viable 'store' when the back door of the store is wide open fior thieves?
Seems like the whole platform is built on sand.
Jump off before it sinks
Hello,
I'm really sorry to hear that. One of our main projects for 2021 is to implement new security features into the viewer. This can be at the technical level such as "encryption" (more like obfuscation) to make it harder to read files from the browser and reverse engineer the model from the GPU, as well as more user choice such as automatically watermarking models and textures used in the viewer.
Our Store and Community team is also ready to help in any way they can with takedown requests and legal action.
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