According the imgur website:
When you upload a post to Imgur, you have two post privacy options: Hidden and Public.
A hidden post means that your post is not shared with the general Imgur community and can only be accessed via the URL. Hidden posts cannot be searched,...
Using only my client id (no OAuth), I hit the gallery search endpoint using the tag '#wow' (ie GET https://api.imgur.com/3/gallery/t/wow/). I get the same results as when visiting this publicly accessible page: https://imgur.com/t/wow.
Viewing the metadata for these images that I get from my api request, almost all (56 / 60) have a privacy value of "hidden"
Could be concerning, though wondered if an imgur expert could explain this before I try contact imgur about it.
Portion of the API json response:
{"data":
{"name": "wow",
"display_name": "wow",
"followers": 29719,
"total_items": 17077,
"following": false,
"is_whitelisted": true,
"background_hash": "QL9pTeJ",
"thumbnail_hash": nil,
"accent": "159559",
"background_is_animated": false,
"thumbnail_is_animated": false,
"is_promoted": false,
"description": "",
"logo_hash": nil,
"logo_destination_url": nil,
"description_annotations": {},
"items":
[{"id": "yWPI5rf",
"title": "Lake basement.",
"description": nil,
"datetime": 1656844974,
"cover": "IrUShgg",
"cover_width": 720,
"cover_height": 960,
"account_url": "DacianFalx",
"account_id": 64529075,
"privacy": "hidden", // 56 / 60 items have the same privacy value
"layout": "blog",
"views": 50557,
"link": "https://imgur.com/a/yWPI5rf",
"ups": 481,
"downs": 6,
"points": 475,
"score": 499,
"is_album": true,
"vote": nil,
"favorite": false,
"nsfw": false,
"section": "",
"comment_count": 116,
"favorite_count": 40,
"topic": nil,
"topic_id": nil,
"images_count": 1,
"in_gallery": true,
"is_ad": false,
"tags":
[{"name": "wow",
"display_name": "wow",
"followers": 29719,
"total_items": 17076,
"following": false,
"is_whitelisted": false,
"background_hash": "QL9pTeJ",
...omitted...
