Where we pagejacked?

[hurlimann]

Logs are showing many hits to pages like:

http://www.OURDOMAIN.com/cjs/hc/findhome.html

Going to these pages and most onpage links are our doamin but their file stucture.

All pages are from a spam looking real estate outfit.

Is this down to our hosts or is it something others have seen happening.

[jdMorgan]

hurlimann,

I've read this post several times and still don't understand it... Could you include a request from your raw access log file, chaning only your domain name?

That might help clarify this as page-jacking versus domain-jacking.

Jim

[hurlimann]

examples:

195.22.199.112 - - [20/Jan/2003:19:50:44 -0500] "GET /cjs/hc/Seller_s_Guide_NRlime125X22.gif HTTP/1.0" 200 1801 "http://www.xyz.com/cjs/hc/index.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)"

195.22.199.112 - - [20/Jan/2003:19:50:44 -0500] "GET /cjs/hc/fsbofamily.gif HTTP/1.0" 200 6706 "http://www.xyz.com/cjs/hc/index.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)"

195.22.199.112 - - [20/Jan/2003:19:50:45 -0500] "GET /cjs/hc/Home_HRred100X20.gif HTTP/1.0" 200 1717 "http://www.xyz.com/cjs/hc/index.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)"

[jdMorgan]

hurlimann,

Looks like a classic case of remote image hot-linking - all of the objects in the sample are .gif images.

There are plenty of threads [webmasterworld.com] here on how to stop that.

One method is to redirect all external requests for images to an "advertisement image" showing your URL. Another is to redirect all such requests to an unappealing image of an appropriate object - in your case, maybe a burned-down house or a shanty. :) Or, you can redirect to your home page - some browsers will follow the redirect, even though it goes from a .gif to a .html page.

Alternatively, you can pursue legal action or a warning of legal action.

HTH,
Jim

[hurlimann]

Thanks.

What is the purpose of them doing this?

[jdMorgan]

I don't know. The answer will depend on what kind of site you have, and how they are using your images. Their motivation could be laziness - they don't want to bother creating their own images. It could be to save money - you are paying your hosting provider for bandwidth that they are "stealing".

There was a post here recently about some hot-linkers using images of expensive water craft owned by a leasing company. The hot-linkers used those images to sell these water craft on the web. Never mind that they didn't own them! It was a big scam, and is not yet settled.

So, there are lots of reasons other sites might link to your images - By examining their site, I'm sure you can figure out why they might want to do this.

Jim