Hotlinking *Can* Expose Minors to Adult Material

going through my stats and found this

[old_expat]

<rant>
Normally, I don't have much of an opinion about adult on the internet so long as youngsters are shielded from it .. especially those who want to be. And I think most sites have some warnings/protections?

But today I realized a scenario that involves hotlinking.

Let's say that one of you has a minor child who likes to tinker and knows how. You're trying to let him/her learn a bit and show them your website stats. S/he clicks on a link in your referrers and sees blantent adult photos and text because the community member has hotlinked to images on your site.

No warnings, no logins.

The community sites, IMO, have an obligation to prevent hotlinking and bandwidth theft. Their excuse seems to be that they can't control their community. Duh!

But don't they have an even greater oblication to prevent adult exposure to minors? By not controlling hotlinking, they have left an adult exposure loophole.

Yes, I know the numbers are very small and the scenario quite unique, and I know that I'm not a minor and have pretty much "seen it all" in my 66 years.

But it really p***** me off to not only be paying for their bandwidth, but to be exposed to their blatant adult material via my own stats page.
</rant>

[edited by: trillianjedi at 3:03 pm (utc) on April 20, 2006]

[vincevincevince]

I'm not sure that this is the most common way that minors can be exposed to adult material, but I agree it is a possibility. Perhaps you need to invest in some anti-hotlinking software.

Another way that hotlinking can lead to adult material exposure is when the minor is making his/her own webpage or community page and hotlinks to an image. It is not quite as common now as it once was, but there are still sites which serve highly offensive images instead of the expected image when someone hotlinks. In particular an infamous image from a site with a name that begins 'goat'. This method can be damaging because the hotlinker his/herself has already got the 'real' image cached and so does not realise the problem, potentially for some time if the server is sending Not Modified headers properly. The minor's schoolfriends, however, will see the full horror. If the site is viewed from school under adult supervision (as many kids will look at their friend's sites, frequently by persistant prompting) then it is quite likely that there will be some disciplining of the hotlinker for 'making an adult site' and 'showing adult pics to friends in school'.

[edited by: trillianjedi at 3:04 pm (utc) on April 20, 2006]

[AWildman]

It is funny you mention that, vince, because isn't that the VERY thing we've heard people in this forum say to do to people who are hotlinking to copyrighted images? :) I'm not disagreeing with your assessment of how that affects the teen, it just struck me funny when some members tell others to do just that to image thieves.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

Which is why, although it might give me a warm feeling inside (like sudden incontience), I do NOT redirect hotlinkers to unpleasant images.

Rgds

Damon

[Matt Probert]

sites which serve highly offensive images instead of the expected image when someone hotlinks.

It is something I thought about, but don't think I ever implemented (being a parent, don't you know). However, I do deliver an advert for my site rather than the expected image to hotlinks.

Matt

[DamonHD]

Hi,

Yes, I alternate between a simple 403 Forbidden and a site ad. Currently I am on the latter; an ugly hot-pink banner with the URL on it.

Rgds

Damon