How to detect image stealing

And how to stop it

[geoinct]

At Pubcon it was suggested that there may be image stealing causing an issue I’m trouble shooting for client. Here’s the background from a previous post;

The site reports show that the number of user sessions has jumped from the approx 1,000 per month the site has seen for a couple years to 13,000 in August, and 35,000+ every month since. Nothing correlates. If we look at a particular day we see large numbers of sessions, many every hour, but very few referring URLS, very few page views on inner pages, just the home page. Even sessions by net location are a small fraction of the total user sessions.

The web hosting company is pretty clueless about it.

Anyone have any idea how to figure out if it is image stealing, what image(s), who’s stealing linking to it/them, and how to stop it?

[pcgamez]

What is the site's topic, and what are most of the images of?

[DaScribbler]

I don't think image stealing would bump your Homepage Hits (unless any initial hit, regardless of file or directory is counted as a Homepage Hit). And even if it were, you'd usually collect a referring URL from most, if not all the hits.

Since most of them don't show the referring URL, then either a) they're all being typed in the addressbar (unlikely), or b) links to the site are being built in a new window (or tab) instead of the originating window (common result of most message forums).

[macrost]

While at PubCon, I was sitting in the tracking and logging session. During bakedjake's presentation he addressed this issue. You have to look for blank referers and stuff like that.

bakedjake, you around?

Mac

[keyplyr]

If you are saying that you suspect remote linking (hot linking) to files on your server from other websites, forums, emails, etc., then there are measures you can take stop it. See here [google.com].

I use analog (www.analog.cx) for website statistics, and have it config'd to show page loads and file requests for each hit. Those that show file requests but no page load are remote linking. If they show a referrer, I follow that and take a look. But since I started serving alternate images to those hot linkers, the problem has almost stopped completely.

[geoinct]

[What is the site's topic, and what are most of the images of?]

The site is for a timber frame builder. There’s pictures of projects in process and some nice shots of finished homes and commercial projects

[I use analog (www.analog.cx) for website statistics, and have it config'd to show page loads and file requests for each hit. Those that show file requests but no page load are remote linking. If they show a referrer, I follow that and take a look. But since I started serving alternate images to those hot linkers, the problem has almost stopped completely. ]

I’ll check with the web hosting company and see if they can do this . thanks!