Need to know how to stop direct linking

BW thieves are linking to my images.

[ann]

I need to know how to protect my site from bandwidth theft, linking to the images on my site.

I read about it somewhere a long time ago but can't remember where?

Can anyone out there help me?

Thanks a bunch in advance.

Ann

[jdMorgan]

ann,

Sure, try a site search for "rewritecond gif jpg" - Lots of threads on this subject.

Cheers,
Jim

[ann]

Thanks, JDM,

But those are not anywhere near what I had read about in the past....I will have to go to the engines and start search there.

I can't use .htaccess or have server priveledges.

Ann

[Tapolyai]

Write a perl/batch code that at 4 am rewrites every image file name to <image><date>.jpg. Put it in your crontab file.

Or you can make this a server side process of a critical page often accessed, then when someone hits between the hours of 4am and 5am, the renaming happens, and once it is done, it is not done again until next day.

Then modify your pages that the image names are dynamically generated, either at server side, or as JavaScript to match the above schema.

[richlowe]

Replace the image with an advertisement for your own site.

Replace the image with something BIG that explains what bandwidth theft is and telling everyone to send an email to their ISP - and give the ISP email address.

Replace the image with some really guesome bloody pictures.

replace the image with a 1X1 gif (to reduce your bandwidth)

Rename the images.

Rename the directories.

Block based upon referrer.

Report them to their ISP.

Richard Lowe

[Purple Martin]

So a site that borders on adult likes your images so much they want to steal them... I'm not going to ask what kind of images you have on your site! :o

But seriously, do mess around with them before you just block the images. Anything that discourages bandwidth theft will benefit us all.

[edited by: engine at 1:09 pm (utc) on Mar. 29, 2006]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]

[jatar_k]

there was a thread about this and I can't find it either but someone mentioned that if the offender doesn't use width and height swap the image to an 800x600 advert about how the site steals images etc.

That one definitely tickled me. (sorry, can't remember who had used it) funny though ;)

[ergophobe]

How about this, point the url to 1 byte file that is really just a text file with a space (some servers will give you an error on empty files). Not much fun, but that will keep each request to less than 500 bytes (because it will cost you some bandwidth to send the headers even for an empty file).

If that doesn't work, perhaps the logo for some ultra-Christian or ultra-feminist organization might be more fun

Tom

[Conard]

I had to deal with this a couple of weeks ago, only the image was being used in a sig file on a forum.
The first week there were over 900 calls for that image.
I changed the name of the image on my site and then created a large button (200x50) that said" Click Here To See My IQ" in large letters at the top and in small letters at the bottom it said "I stole this image from another site, now dont I look stupid"
Of course when you clicked the button nothing would happen.
I then loged into the forum and watched the scramble for a little while :-)
I have since removed the image, but it was fun for awhile.

[keyplyr]

I once had a .MIDI files (songs) archive at my site and had repeated problems with people remote linking. If I saw that someone was in fact linking to a song, I would swap the file for an audio (.WAV) file of the Meg Ryan coffee shop scene from When Harry Met Sally.

[rogerd]

sorry, can't remember who had used it

That was me, but I'm certainly not the originator of the idea. It's too bad that most webmasters will include height/width attributes, but if they don't, you can really have some fun. I'm sure they loved seeing the pirate flags spread across their page, with their content shoved off the right hand side...

[bigjohnt]

If I saw that someone was in fact linking to a song, I would swap the file for an audio (.WAV) file of the Meg Ryan coffee shop scene from When Harry Met Sally.

ROFLMAO...
I almost wish I had wav's and a BW pirate to send this to. HA-HA!
Can you imagine the scene when someone clicks to listen to the stolen music at WORK! You can hide a pic pretty quickly, but that would be a SCREAM! :) :o

[MThiessen]

Hello,

This may sound like a stupid question but suppose you have hunderds of images, and you get 60 thousand plus vistors per day, how do you find out IF you are getting images hijacked?

Thanks

[keyplyr]

> how do you find out IF you are getting images hijacked?

In your raw logs it will be obvious since the referrer will only get a file and not a page. Likewise, if you are using analog or another webstats analyzer, the referrer will not request a page, but only the file(s).

Here's some free anti-leeching scripts [hotscripts.com]

Another way to stop images from being remotely linked, is to add this to the .htaccess file in your images directory:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}!^http://yoursite.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}!^http://www.yoursite.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule [^/]+.(gif¦jpg)$ - [F]

[MThiessen]

The term "raw log" scares me to death! OMG my logs are always bigger than a full length dvd movie lol.(and thats getting chomped daily)

I am using webalizer and the history feature, then deleting the logs daily at 4am by cron, have to or it would devour the server like a fine steak with A1 sauce.

I can see all my refferers, but it doesnt say exactly what the refferers are getting...

Kinda hard to tell if its happening or not but I suspect it (paranoid by nature).