Django Rest Framework and React Front End: How to prevent unauthorized users from viewing private images if they get a hold of the image URL?
Actually, before the REST API endpoint serves the URL of images, the request and response of the endpoint can be properly authorized using the Django REST frameworks authorization framework. 
Additionally, you can write your own custom Django middlewares [HTTP hooks] for your desired end goal.
The middlewares can custom the HTTP request-response behaviors based on your needs.
My understanding is that on a normal React website all the media will be served from the same server than the front-end files (HTML, CSS and Javascript).
The REST API backend will only provide links to where those images are stored, and it will be served and displayed by the front end.
The problem is if those images are private and only one user should be able to see them. If someone gets a hold of the image URL and opens it they would be able to see the image.
How do modern websites get around this problem? What would be the workflow between Django and React to keep the user's images safe and private?