How to deter thieves from stealing your images and server bandwidth
Nobody likes a thief, and we all want to stop them in their tracks.
Lately I’ve been finding more and more bloggers lifting images directly from my server and using them on their own blogs / websites. Not only is this stealing, but it’s also using up the bandwidth you’re paying your web host for.
The last straw came when Cat, of Designers Who Blog, sent me a recent email, asking, “Isn’t this yours?”
She had linked to yet another blog where the owner had simply copied and pasted my blog article source code, in effect taking credit for my work. My top 50 graphic design blogs article proved to be a popular one, and a lot of people were using the images on my server to decorate a similar (or identical) article on their blog.
With a little .htaccess wizardry, anyone stealing my images now has a web page like so (click the image for a larger version):
Here’s the actual stolen blog post (numerous attempts to contact the graphic designer who owns the blog yielded no response). I wonder how long my replacement images will be there for?
UPDATE: January 24th, 2008
The offending blog owner sent me an apology and removed the images.
Here’s how to deter the thieves
You need to add some code into your .htaccess file, which should be in your website’s root directory.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png|jpg)$ /images/nohotlink.jpe [L]
In my case, I changed the mysite text above to davidairey, and you would add your own domain here.
Then I created a custom image titled nohotlink.jpe, and uploaded it to my /image/ folder. Notice the file extension .jpe - this is because .jpeg and .jpg files are now blocked from appearing on third party websites, but this exception allows you to show your custom image. Here’s mine:
I could use something more creative, such as “I love David Airey” and a photo of me inside a heart, but this’ll do for now. Any suggestions?
UPDATE:
It’s very reasonable to assume that some people have hotlinked to my images without realising it’s wrong. Therefore, I’ve updated my custom image to something less radical (shown below).
For a more detailed tutorial, check out how to stop hotlinking and bandwidth theft. There are also some other options for banning particular websites or removing the need for a custom image. If you use images across different websites, it’s also possible to add exceptions to the rule, so that you don’t block use between sites of your own.
One thing I’m not so sure about, is what effect this has on your organic search engine traffic. Can Google, Yahoo, MSN et al still provide image search traffic with this .htaccess addition?
For me, this isn’t a problem, considering the mess that’s been made following my domain name theft, but it’s worth finding out the answer if you receive a lot of visitors via image searches.
Your thief deterrent image
Have you had a problem with thieves stealing your bandwidth? How polite would you be with your own custom image?
Third party reading about image hotlinking:
- Dealing with scrapers: what do you do?
- How to prevent hotlinking and bandwidth theft
- Is hotlinking stealing? Does it infringe copyrights?
- Ultimate guide to htacess and mod_rewrite
- Benefiting from blog scrapers
Header image courtesy of The Diplomat
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A useful and helpful technique! Thanks David. I am not really exposed with plagiarism before until 3 years ago I entered International Baccalaureate Diploma.
Each designer should take into account this issue as we don’t want to be sued or we might want to sue someone for taking our design (either web or graphic) without any acknowledgment.
You need to whitelist any search engines you want to be able to index your images. See the link below for htaccess code to do this:
http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/htaccess-mod_rewrite-ultimate-guide/
Patrick Altoft’s last blog post..By: Wouter
It’s definitely something to think about for designers with websites / blogs. It deviates from my normal graphic design content, but it affects me and my business so I thought it worth publishing.
Patrick,
Thanks for linking to your useful article. I’ve added it to the ‘third party reading’ list in the content above, and have changed my .htaccess to whitelist those search engines.
The hotlink section of my .htaccess now reads:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?davidairey\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !google\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !search\?q=cache [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !msn\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !yahoo\. [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png|jpg)$ /images/nohotlink.jpe [L]
After reading your post I thought I came up with a novel and unique idea to create a ‘better’ rewrite rule. Instead of sending the hotlinking user an alternative image which tells them to ‘get lost’, you could instead send the original image watermarked. This would have the added benefit of displaying your artwork to pottential customers on another blog, but still reference it back to you.
What a brilliant idea, I thought to myself, unique! After 5secs of googling I have unfortunately discovered it’s already been done, so I am unable to claim that I came up with this cool idea.
For an example on how to do this take a look at solution 3 on http://efficienttips.com/stop-prevent-image-hotlink-apache-htaccess-php/
The only problem with this solution is that your bandwidth will still be eaten up!
That is hilariously awesome, I had never seen this idea before now. I don’t put a lot of images in my articles or I may actually “steal” your idea. I do wonder how long those two sites will have your custom image up.
Dustin Brewer’s last blog post..Top 10 job boards for freelance web designers
I also had one of my topics stolen recently, unfortunately on this occasion the hotlinked topic gained quite a bit of exposure and took away some of the limelight from the original which was a bit frustrating.
This solution would have been good fun to put to use! I’ll have to remember it for next time..
Chris
David, Thank you very much for the information. This helps very much, especially for beginners like me to be aware of information thieves.
I checked those links and they are still loading images from your site..!!
Chaitanya VRK’s last blog post..Adobe’s 25 years of innovation
I just want to say thanks for bringing up this topic. In the past I have just renamed any stolen images rendering any linkage useless but it is hard to keep up. Your solution seems much more efficient.
Many years ago I had the graphics and copy of a whole web site stolen, which I only discoved after Googling one of my key phrase. I eventually granted the thief the use of my material after a substanial payoff and a link to the original site.
This kind of theft is enough to make anyone see red!
Zoe Feast’s last blog post..“Business contact manager has encountered a problem and needs to close”
The watermark idea is an interesting one. I was curious as to how it might work so checked out that link you pasted. I still think removing the image altogether is more effective, but thanks for informing me of that one.
Dustin,
As I ’stole’ this idea from others, you’re more than welcome to ’steal’ it from me.
Chris,
That’s a shame you didn’t get the exposure your content deserved. I’m sure it was frustrating.
Chaitanya,
You’re very welcome. I imagine those custom images will be up for quite a while, especially on the many other websites that have been hotlinking to my images for some time now.
Wow David!
That’s pretty wicked, I love the idea! This could be *very* useful.
Haha, that was a truly epic win there, David!
I’ve caught several people stealing images off my site as well, I think I will use this technique to help out with any possible thieves in the future! My thanks to you!
David -
I think this is a great idea and is something that I’ve implemented a few times in my life. Depending on the offense (and the site I’m implementing on) I’ve taken different tactics… I won’t say I’ve done it, but I know some folks who redirect people to “hello.jpg”. If you’ve been around the net a while then you probably know what that is… if not, check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_site#Goatse.cx
Anyway, my main reason for posting is to say that I don’t really use this much anymore. I make sure all of my images are watermarked with my copyright & URL and I host them all from my SmugMug account. There are no bandwidth restrictions for pros & they are OK with blog/site usage (within limits - they don’t want to be the backend for youtube, but blog use is OK).
Now I don’t need to worry about this too much since my large files (photos) are served up by SmugMug, they’ve automatically got my URL watermarked, and my pages overall load faster because you’ve got multiple sources of the data needed for a page. Not a solution for everyone, but it works well for some.
cheers!
I like the idea, but I do like Grouse’s version better.
In the second example (Garcinga blog) he isn’t actually saying he wrote the article, and is just linking to your blog, so I guess your approach would be a bit radical.
I agree with Yaili. To anyone who credited your work, they shouldn’t get banned. They at least drive the traffic back to your site, which is something you always should welcome. But your idea is excellent!!
Oh…as of now, your a bit of radical approach has made your images in your top 50 blogs the same as these two thieves. So you better look into it now.
Thanks David for this post!!!! It is really helpful…even thought I am not been subject to plagiarism a have quite a bit of infos on my site that i won’t share with other random website. Thanks also for the comments……really helpful blog
Simone
Yaili,
I’ve been thinking about this, and both you and Grouse have a good point. I can remember one hotlinker I contacted telling me they had no idea it was an issue, and they removed the images immediately.
So I’ve updated my custom image to something less radical, and it no longer mentions stealing. I prefer the new one anyway. ;)
Nice, funny and apt.
Did you realize that you have given free traffic to the rogue sites? Please point some to mine too! :-)
cheers!
-CH
Chris’s last blog post..Hilarious (and confusing) Signs
Excellent Post David.
Apart from stealing other people’s bandwidth, it could also slow down their page loading times, if hotlinking to slow loading websites. I guess most people are simple not aware, using a Desktop Blogging Client like Windows Live Writer would avoid this for the less savvy bloggers.
What happens when I steal “I Love David Airey” image ;-) ?
Jamie
PS I want a I Love Terinea Weblog logo, maybe people could adopt yours a banner link, its quite retro/cool!
Terinea Weblog’s last blog post..Friday Humour - Bad Day at the Office
I often see my articles and images on various dubious sites - it’s very annoying. I like this idea but it doesn’t really save you any bandwidth as the scraper/splogger is still referring to AN image on your server, albeit not the image that they think.
I suppose it could act as a deterrent but I fear most of these blog scrapers are actually just automated scripts than go through rss feeds - there’s little or no human involvement - so the scraper has no shame.
Aaron :: miLienzo.com’s last blog post..Do you want a Jaiku invite?
You should add your url to the new image. Let visitors who are interested in your posts find the original one.
After experiencing a recent website theft and numerous photos being stolen (and just hotlinked), this looks like a potential way to deter folks. Not sure if others are experiencing this, but now when I view any of your articles in Bloglines, all images are this “I heart David Airey” image. (I had a few articles marked to save and reread). Maybe it’s just something odd on my side?
Lorissa’s last blog post..“Microsoft Word is not a design tool”. Amen.
I don’t mind pointing a little traffic to those sites for now. Helps to illustrate my article. The links are nofollow however.
Jamie,
Try stealing my stealing image, see what happens. ;)
Let me know if I can help out with your own Terinea version.
Aaron,
Valid point that it doesn’t save you any bandwidth. It’ll act as a nice deterrent for those humans who know what they’re doing, and can be a nice form of advertisement on the scraper sites.
Dan,
Good idea. Cheers.
Lor,
I’d not thought about the Bloglines issue, so just ‘whitelisted’ it. I’d greatly appreciate you letting me know if those previous posts show images okay now. Thanks for the heads-up!
Yep, all sorted now!
Lorissa’s last blog post..“Microsoft Word is not a design tool”. Amen.
Thanks David for telling that excellent htaccess trick, I always thought how this works when i used to see image blocked etc like messages on hot linked images.
Mohd. Hashim Khan’s last blog post..Ringtones for your phone
Not that I have any desirable images to speak of, but would you mind if I stole your code? ;)
Cam Beck’s last blog post..Are You A Great Lover?
Thanks for this info. I hope my question not too dull but how would I know if someone was using my images without permission?
Oh, my. I didn’t realise you could even do this. Well done David!
(and where do you find all this great stuff?)
I’m also of the opinion that a lot of newbies don’t know about web manners yet (even old timers slip up at times), so your new “I Love David Airey” is more apt. It’s also closer to who you really are.
Several years back I had someone do similar so I changed the graphic. Your option is much better as my readers don’t lose out.
At the time, some people suggested exchanging the linked graphic with a huge graphic that would take up their whole site. Tempting … :-)
An as mentioned, adding a url wouldn’t go amiss …
“I HEART http://www.davidairey.com” or some such.
Again, it’s closer to the truth because they wouldn’t steal something they didn’t admire. Yes?
We must be on the same wavelength.
Darren Hoyt’s last blog post..Scrape This
I’m thinking a nice goatse would be a good deterrent.
Edmund’s last blog post..Time is Running Out
Excellent excellent trick. You could have really gotten them by posting some kind of porn photo - so kudos for having some class ;-)
Vingold’s last blog post..I am now available for hire!
Hey David, I can see that even you are a designer, you know a lot about stuff like this .htaccess thing.
I’ve just visited the thief’s blog, it looks hilarious now :-D
Hey David,
Just a little word of caution. I tried using this exact same technique (from the same site you are using) and it didn’t turn out to well. I tried using it on NiceStylesheet (my CSS Gallery) and had numerous emails come in from visitors that they couldn’t see any of the images on my site or their feed reader wouldn’t display the images or both. It seemed hit or miss. Some had no issues and others couldn’t see any images, so maybe just watch out for that.
Deron
Deron Sizemore’s last blog post..Look Back at ‘07 and Moving Forward in ‘08
I think that is AWESOME! (The code, not people “Stealing” images) One of the things that I was thinking is what would stop people downloading your images and then using them off of their server? I know that would save your bandwidth, but it still does not protect your images… I guess nothing is foolproof.
Regards
Matt
“if you take a look at their website they already have your images back.”
I’m still seeing ‘I Love David Airey’. But if that’s the case, perhaps it’s time to contact Wordpress? Because that’s where they’re hosting their blog.
Man thanks for this post, I had a laugh checking out the 50 graphic design blogs with your ‘I heart David Airey’ images all over the place, it’s priceless lol I wonder for how long the images will stay there.
Ok, now gotta go edit my htaccess file :)
Jon - FreelanceFolder’s last blog post..7 Ways To Give Your Freelancing Career A Boost
@ Deron Sizemore
I think the problem you are coming across will be due to rss readers essentially hot-linking to your images when reading the rss feeds. To combat this you would need to do something along the lines of what has been written here -> http://blog.photoblogs.org/2004/12/23/photos-in-rss-feeds-vs-hotlink-blocking/
@Grouse,
Thanks for the link. Seems interesting. For my CSS gallery, every image in the gallery is a thumbnail and I do not have full sized images. So… I’m not sure this would work for me since I don’t have two different images? Seeing has I don’t have a “…tn.jpg” copy, I would have to allow “… .jpg” and I think I’d be in the same situation that I’m in now?
This was just one part of the equation though. I actually did have readers sending email saying that they could not see the images on the site even, so that’s why I removed the hotlink blocking.
Thanks
Deron Sizemore’s last blog post..Look Back at ‘07 and Moving Forward in ‘08
Thanks for posting this article. I never thought about that before, but now that I’m starting to blog again, it is definitely something to be aware of.
Natasha’s last blog post..Weight Loss Challenge for 2008
My favourite use of this image redirection technique was Mike Davidson’s creative alteration of US senator John McCain’s MySpace profile:
http://mike.newsvine.com/_news/2007/03/27/633799-hacking-john-mccain
It didn’t stay up very long, but was an excellent prank nonetheless and made the headlines of several major US news channels.
Ahhhh good old .htaccess…
I’m a new subscriber to you David and so far your posts have been really helpful!
Thanks so much for this!
It would be nice to see something like this incorporated into a working Wordpress plugin. A one click smash to stop theives! Googling, all I found was one, and it didn’t work properly.
*Also of interest is this, an online anti-hotlinking test tool. After modifying .htaccess, we can make sure it works.
Adrian’s last blog post..Design for the Homeless
I think a lot of people simply don’t realise what they are doing. Most of the genuine bloggers I’ve contacted when this has happened to me have apologised and thanked me for pointing it out. It’s annoying how many people run a blog with no visible means of contact though. Like having a house with no front door.
Sploggers are a different matter though. This might be a naive question but doesn’t it use up your bandwidth to have them display your ‘David Airey’ graphic? If so, I assume the deterrent value makes it worthwhile.
And hey! Where did you get the ‘latest post from commenters’ plugin? Very cool.
Mark McGuinness’s last blog post..What Writer’s Block and Stage Fright Have In Common
“Where did you get the ‘latest post from commenters’ plugin?”
I’d also love to get that plugin … although, where is my latest post? … hmmm ….
Cat - it’s from a WordPress plugin called CommentLuv.
David,
This is a really funny and clever solution. Reminds me of a guy who realized that his Wifi connection was being pirated, so he coded up a filter than made all unauthorized content appear upside down.
The difference is that in your case, some of the scrapers are well-meaning but ignorant, as you point out. I had a ‘fan’ copy an article from my site and then her site got dugg by a Power Digger. She might have made the front page but her site couldn’t take the load either way…
However, I would say that more often than not, there are bad intentions in mind and you need to protect yourself.
Use plugins like Bad Behavior and CrawlTrack to block bots as a first layer of defense.
For the second layer:
Images - watermarking or filler content, you’re covered here already.
Text- there’s a WordPress plugin called AntiLeech that similarly feeds fake content to scrapers.
Code- there are a number of ways to obfuscate code but this is really a double-edged sword and requires extra care to manage.
For the 3rd layer, when horse has left the barn:
Plugins like Digital Fingerprints allow you to recognize if someone is stealing your content so that you can complain to their ISP or better, Google. After all, if the thief’s site is de-indexed, it basically ceases to exist.
Another related article at A List Apart:
Smarter Image Hotlinking Prevention.
Adrian’s last blog post..Design for the Homeless
Good of you to double-check the images for me.
Hashim,
You’re very welcome.
Cam,
By all means, steal my code. Just don’t lift anything off my server, unless you really love me. ;)
Beth Ellen,
I wasn’t sure how you’d find out, unless there was a link back to your site (or someone kindly informed you about it, as Cat did). However, Jacob has just left an informative comment above, detailing a plugin called Digital Fingerprints. That seems like it’d help out, although I haven’t tested it yet.
Cat,
Glad you like my new image better, and thanks for the web address suggestion, which I’ve implemented. As for finding such info, I like to keep my ear to the ground about hosting issues, particularly given the problems I’ve encountered lately.
The plugin to show commenter’s latest blog post is called CommentLuv, though I’m not sure why it doesn’t pick up BoDo. I just took a quick look at the feed URL on your homepage, and wondered why it has /Swxl at the end. Perhaps that has something to do with it, but I’m really no expert.
Darren, Adrian, ManxStef,
Cheers for the links.
Edmund,
That would be a strong deterrent, but not really my style.
Vingold, Hieu, Jason, Natasha,
Thanks very much for your comments.
Deron,
Making sure your images still appear in feed readers is a good point, and one that Lorissa brought up when she couldn’t see mine in Bloglines. I added bloglines.com to the ‘whitelist’ in my .htaccess file, and we’re good to go.
Matt,
You’re right that nothing is fullproof. I guess that if someone really wants to use your images, there’s nothing to stop them. I don’t mind so much if people take my images and host them on their own servers, it’s just the using my bandwidth issue that makes it worse.
Jon,
Thanks for dropping in, and good luck with your own .htaccess file.
Mark,
You’re right, it does use my bandwidth when people show my custom image. If they’re going to steal images, better to turn them into a self-promoting ad. :)
I’ve linked to the CommentLuv plugin above (the one you asked about). It’s a goodun eh?
Jacob,
Nice insight, thanks. I’ll have to check those plugins out, as I’m not using any. All the best.
David,
A more interesting approach to this would be to redirect to a PHP/ASP page that logs the referer (i.e. the page requesting the image) in a database and then redirects to your .jpe image.
This way you’re not only showing your ’stolen from’ image on their website, but also finding out WHO is hot linking to your images.
David,
Great article as ever. No sooner had I read it (and decided it would never happen to me) I was the victim of content theft! Thanks for the article, I’ve now taken steps. Just goes to show a site of any size could be the target of scrapers.
Cheers
Rob
Hi David, I was wondering how you found out if others bloggers had copied your post. Was it Copyscape?
Andrew Kelsall’s last blog post..In Rainbows, In trend, In typography…
That’s an interesting and useful trick.
The guy is still giving you free advertising.
Adam’s last blog post..Vista Logitech camera compatibility issues
…just a note David, your blog post (where the images were hotlinked) ‘top 50 graphic design blogs ” started with Veerle’s Blog PR8 …that blog is now PR7, so there should be not PR8 section at all unfortunately :(
Andrew Kelsall’s last blog post..In Rainbows, In trend, In typography…
Mmmmm htaccess is one area were I really should pay more attention to. I think I will definately use this for a website I am creating at the moment.
btw I do think the love david airey updated image is a better and nicer one to use
Jermayn Parker’s last blog post..When worship becomes more than worshiping God
That’s awesome! I don’t know if anyone is actually stealing images of mine, but I’m going to do this right away. Just have to fire up Photoshop and make an image lol. Thanks for the great advice David!
Sean’s last blog post..Macbook Air Parody
Thanks David and Jacob.
I’m not sure why Business of Design online isn’t showing up here. When I went to get the plugin, I typed the url into their form and it worked.
There have been SO many new plugins written since I started DWB. But, what to pick, lah?
I am checking out how to have php inside a post so if you have any tips for that, please feel free as my feeble attempts are not working (I’m taking the blogroll off and putting it into its own page).
And of course I’ll use your advice at Business of Design online as we have a similar problem with copy (just not as bad as what you have here).
David, pretty please, could you edit out the link to DWB’s play version in my last post? I tried to, but didn’t get back here on time. I keep forgetting that blog comments are not email :-D
Heya Cat, there’s a plugin for Wordpress called runPHP that allows you to use PHP in your post. It can be found here:
http://www.nosq.com/blog/2006/01/runphp-plugin-for-wordpress/
I hope this helps . :)
Natasha’s last blog post..Weight Loss Challenge for 2008
Natasha,
Excellent.
runPHP works MUCH better than the PHP plugin I was attempting to use. Thanks!
Thanks David, great plugin, looking forward to using it.
Mark McGuinness’s last blog post..What Writer’s Block and Stage Fright Have In Common
YIKES! I’d better go and check out the images on my site. I’d really hate to give you any free link love =P
Seriously, I think this is a very clever way to avoid theft. I’ve noticed that Top 50 blog design-related posts are very often stolen. I did however also notice that one blogger asked for permission first.
Dennis Bjørn Petersen’s last blog post..Off-Topic Friday Trekkies Everywhere Are Getting A Weird Feeling In Their Lower Region
Hello, David
I liked your post. The question of copyright has been discussed at the forum for writers that I like. So I decided to post part of your post there.
hope I’m not breaking any intellectual property rights :)
You are more that welcome to comment.
Wow…
He still hasn’t changed it.
As for me, I haven’t done it yet - but I shall soon.
I’m gonna say something along the lines, “Hey, don’t steal my bandwidth!” and then my blog’s URL.
But I am curious about how it would effect Google rankings…
Brian Purkiss’s last blog post..Well, I’m Back!
Once again great tips David.
I guess I cannot use this idea in my windows acounts.
Niyaz PK’s last blog post..The World Wide Mess
On the bandwidth issue, you should actually be able to save some - simply make your substitute image an 8-colour gif or some such. This will only be a few kilobytes whereas the images they might be trying to nick could be much much larger.
You take it to it’s natural conclusing by making it a 1px square dot
Could you be even dirtier on this and refer to a dynamic page (PHP, .NET) that includes a 302 redirect in the response?
This way you could actually redirect the user to a page on your website?
Andrew Banks’s last blog post..BBC Homepage Beta – Jumping on the Web 2.0 band wagon
This is certainly something I’m going to implement. Thanks, David.Now, how about a post on ‘whole post theft prevention’ :)
Love that ‘take Ctrl’ image, BTW. One of yours?
johno’s last blog post..Why Bembo Sucks
David, Thank you very much for the information. This helps very much, especially for beginners like me to be aware of information thieves.
I checked those links and they are still loading images from your site..!!
UK Celebrity News’s last blog post..Britney Spears
David, it looks like that stolen post has normal images now. I guess they have figured this one out.
Oleg’s last blog post..Update: Bentley BMW E39 Repair Manual found
David, very nice post and something I am going to implement for my wife’s recipe blog spicytasty.com where she posts a lot of pictures. I have already noticed a few places hotlinking to her pictures and this will be a great deterrent!
Also, about totally saving bandwidth, I wonder if you could redirect to a picture hosted say at Flickr or Photobucket!
Stumbled!
K-IntheHouse’s last blog post..Enso Launcher Commands Cheatsheet
I just took a look at his blog and all your images are there in their full glory! Not only does he steal, he is unrepentant when found out!
Steven’s last blog post..Official - Dundee is pure dead clever
I left a comment on his blog!
As an aside, I have hot-linked images in the past when I have been too lazy to upload it to my own server. I would only do that to “big” websites - not small bloggers. Of course that is a similar argument to saying it’s ok to shop-lift from a supermarket but not a independent shop (not that I do either - *ahem*!!). I have also been hotlinked from. A comment on their blog sorted that out.
One friend who had an image hotlinked did then just change his own code to point at something else, then changed the original image, with the same filename to, well, let’s just say… something quite revolting.
To copy an entire post, well, asides from anything else, it is copyright infringement!
Steven’s last blog post..Official - Dundee is pure dead clever
great trick! thank you. :)
I left a comment over on the offending blog.
Pwnd.
And I also asked him to stop using that blog style, as it’s the same one I use, and he’s/she’s making it look bad.
What a smart move - i have sent the url for several of my designer friends
strategen søgemaskineoptimering’s last blog post..Nethandel i Danmark for 30 mia. kr.
I couldn’t help a smile, David. I was writing about this very thing in my SEO book yesterday and today I find it on your site. :) I like the image you created for this purpose - great idea. It makes me want to steal your pics. LOL.
Mihaela Lica’s last blog post..The Wakeup Call – Open Your Eyes to the Vastness of the Web
I’ve been busy putting some content on my new blog, Logo Design Love.
The image at the top of this blog post was found on The Diplomat (I linked to their site at the foot of the blog post). Pretty fitting eh?
The author of the blog where my 50 design blog article was copied has responded, apologising, and has now removed all the offending images. It’s a shame really, as I quite liked having ‘I love David Airey.com’ all over his site. ;)
Thanks for all your comments, and glad this post was of interest.
hey quick question…does this effect images in google images by any chance…since those are in a frame? I dont want to block images there.
Joe’s last blog post..Vitamin Water AF1 by EmmanueLabor
Don’t forget the infamous: Goatse.cx
On one of the old sites that I used to own, someone was repeatedly stealing my images and one day I decided to end it once and for all.
Uploaded the Goatse.cx pic and hillarity ensued.
Needless to say the theft stopped the very next day :P
Karenk’s last blog post..eHarmony promotional codes for February 2008
I definitely like the friendlier image - there could be people trying to promote you using your images, not just stealing or promoting themselves.
Did you have a way to see your images get stolen (e.g. stats) or was it only by chance/people telling you?
I mentioned above how you can whitelist specific websites. Do that for Google and you should be fine.
Kris,
You’re right about people unwittingly hotlinking, and promoting me at the same time. It’s not right to label them thieves.
I found out by people telling me (it was happening more and more frequently, so I knew it was best to look into it further).
Brilliant…
Love it. Gonna implement it right now!
David this very fresh and welcome information. I’m not bothered about our baldchemist site but our clients have very peculiar content that I know has been nicked by others in the same branch.
I actually encourage young up and coming designers and marketers in particular to take what they want for free from http://www.thebaldchemist.com. No credit required.
But NOT our clients content.
The reason being that what the thieves take is old stuff anyway and we are continually creating new and fresh stuff.
However, Thanks a million for this. We are now implementing the coding on all our clients sites.
Keep strong. Get as much joy as you can every day. Nice one.
The Baldchemist.
As an artist, I sometimes find images of mine on other sites, even though I have a “no hotlinking/copying” and copyright notice at the top of my site pages. It’s flattering that they like my art, but sales and licensing are what put food on my table.
Most of my images are already watermarked, and I will also implement the code you’ve described here - superb stuff! I had been going through each hotlinked image and renaming it, and also replacing it with an alternate image (smaller, less bandwidth) for each time this occurred. Your code will do all the work for me now! Woohoo! What a time-saver!
I’d like to implement a “no cache” script, too, but if folks have javascript disabled, that won’t help me. If someone really wants an image, they will find a way to get it - so watermarks are a good thing to use.
As always, you ROCK! :)
I’m glad you found the info of use. I can see how your clients would appreciate you implementing the code for them.
Dawn
Great that this will save you a lot of time, and thanks for the kind words.
OMG! I had no idea that using a photo from a blog drew blood from their bandwidth..hmm
Thanks for the info..(smile)
spostareduro’s last blog post..Yicrosoft Directory Girl
Dagnabbit, I was soooo excited to try this out! But after I got my .htaccess file and my replacement image ready to upload, I was dismayed to find that my hosting service does not allow .htaccess files!
Grrrr…I guess it’s back to replacing hotlinked images with a replacement one by one by one. *sigh*
Keep up the superb work David!
Sorry to read your hosts don’t allow .htaccess. Reckon you should start looking for another, as that sounds pretty odd.
Bye for now.
I began blogging about 6 months ago, and actually “stole” logo images hosted on others sites at first instead of simply copying them and hosting them myself, just because it was one extra step that I had to take.
I didn’t realize that it was really a big deal, stealing bandwidth from those hosting the sites. Until an image began appearing on my site…of Shrek and Donkey and the words “I thought we were friends! Stop stealing my bandwidth!” I immediately removed it, and realized it was not simply “no big deal.” I have since to “steal” and images and bandwidth.
Great post, a great way to battle these thieves, as well as let casual bloggers that this is a no no in the blogging world.
Erica DeWolf’s last blog post..Direct Mail and Email: Working Together
Hi
Thanks for the great .htaccess edit. It works on my home page but not on the others
http://www.artbeat.name/woodpecker-studios AND artbeat.name/spacedcadet-gallery. How do I protect all the images on all the pages?
Thanks for the help
DJL
Glad to read you’ve learned a little about blog etiquette here. Thanks for commenting.
Diane,
Perhaps if you post the code in your .htaccess file, someone will understand the problem. I’ll certainly take a look, but I’m no expert.
Hi David Airey
Thanks for replying to my request for help. I’m very grateful for your response. I posted the code from my .htaccess file for you to check out. Thanks a boatload!
I’ll be checking out this great website of yours all day. I’ve a great deal to learn and your website is totally inspiring. I promise not to bother you for help endlessly.
Regards
DJL
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -d [OR]
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} !^$
RewriteRule .* - [L]
RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml sitemap.php [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^install.php install.php [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^search/([^/]+)?$ index.php?mainCat=search&q=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)?$ index.php?mainCat=$1&subCat=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)?$ index.php?mainCat=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?artbeat\.name/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !google\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !search\?q=cache [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !msn\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !yahoo\. [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png|jpg)$ /images/nohotlink.jpe [L]
No need to use my surname when saying hi.
Having looked at your .htaccess file, the only thing I can guess is how you have an uncommon domain (the .name). I’m not 100% sure, but I think I was having some issues with this hotlink fix on my .co.uk site.
Perhaps someone else can help out, but sadly I can’t.
Thanks very much for the compliment on my website by the way.
Nice tutorial… very nice.
Alot of users are surprised to find what can be done with htaccess
On the earlier discussed topic of bandwidth usage on your images… there is always the option of back tracking usage of the leech image with analytics, lad vampiring the offending sites and scrambling your leech image urls.
But this is only useful if they using a hosted blog CMS or a their own site. Anyone with an unlimited bandwidth blog would be completely unaware of your retaliation.
Thank you for this! I’ve tried a few other .htaccess suggestions for disabling hotlinking and none seemed to work. This worked great. It’s quite humorous to see your no hotlinking image show up on other people’s website. Thanks for the well-written article.
John Kolbert’s last blog post..Content Protection: Disable Hotlinking
Hi, sorry to double comment. I just implemented this and I was told from one of my web-based feed readers that he gets the “blocked image” replacing the posts images. I suppose the only way to overcome this would be to manually enter in the URL into the htaccess of each web based reader. Correct? Would this deter your from keeping the hotlink protection?
Glad you liked the quick tutorial. Thanks.
John,
No worries about the double comment. You ask a great question about blocking feed readers. I covered the main ones in my .htaccess file (Google, Bloglines etc.) but found that some subscribers were using readers I’d never heard of before. It’s certainly a deterrent.
John, I had that problem with David’s feed. The images were blocked (or actually replaced) in my feed reader. Suddenly the posts didn’t make sense because the images were used as examples. However, I figured out it wasn’t right and asked David about it. I knew he would want me and others to read his feed properly. It turned out that he just needed to add a line to the htaccess.
Perhaps you could put a message in your replacement images, or at the bottom of you RSS feed, that if things don’t look right the reader should email you so you can give them access. Might be a non-confusing way to deal with the issue?
That’s a great idea to put a message at the bottom or your feed, and thanks again for letting me know of the issue I had.
Hope you’re well.
This is great info, I have learned a lot here.
I only wish someone would steal my bandwidth/images as this would indicate I had more readership!
Stacy’s last blog post..My New Shop Banner
I’ve just been doing some hotlink prevention myself. However, I’ve avoided the htaccess method because I don’t want to block any search engines. Whitelisting those few is OK, but what about any new ones that come online? You never know when the killer image search site will launch, and you won’t be listed in there. What about Picsearch?
For the moment, I’m just moving affected images, and anyone who requests the old image will get an advert for my site. Doing it this way is also more fun - if you use htaccess to block, it’s likely the hotlinker will notice straight away and steal someone else’s image instead. If you block the image later, your advert could be on their site for a long time!
Jonathan’s last blog post..Mothering Sunday or Mother’s Day?
You make a good point about the whitelist. You’ll never be able to cover everything.
Hi David,
Great post. I wrote about the same issue just a couple days after you wrote this but I didn’t have the knowledge you do. I wish I had found this post back then. I had a site that was hot linking to an image that I no longer used and I simply changed the image but your solution works for all images.
I also wish I had thought to take a screen print of the offending website like you did rather than link to the pages. They have removed the images so I guess it worked.
Thanks, Brian
Brian Hawkins’s last blog post..OMG, Where’s My Sites? A Hosting Nightmare To Learn From
Thanks for all the images over the years. I’m kidding!!! In a world of uncreative people trying to be creative- this will always happen.
Glad to know the people hotlinking your images have now removed them. I’m also glad you liked the article. Thanks.
Thanks very much for recommending that bit of htaccess code, it certainly helped on one of my sites where I was getting a lot of copy and graphics taken. It does raise the issue of some ‘reputable’ web directories where the whole post is taken and displayed, with links to the source rewritten internally.
Mizpah Magazine’s last blog post..The Melting Ice Caps of Rome
You guys have to read this post :
http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/seo-sem/link-building-secrets/maurizio-petrone.php
Basically it explains how to create backlinks from your images.
adityaw’s last blog post..Domain Names That You Didn’t Know Existed
You’re very welcome.
adityaw,
Interesting link. I’ll have to re-read it when I’ve more time on my hands. Cheers.
Hey I kept seeing my images in other peoples ads on craigs list so I used your trick. worked well I refreshed there ad after and I don’t think they will like what they see. But the above post about backlinking sound cool I’m gonna go check that out now.
Any way thanks for the code
Patrick Collins’s last blog post.. Xbox 360 “Premium Gold Pack” Video Game System
Glad this worked out for you on CraigsList. All the best.
THANK YOU. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you again.
And thank you for updating it to allow robots, too.
Did I say thanks?
Thanks, David.
Leanne’s last blog post..Husky Portrait : Badger WIP #2
Great! I’ve seen this technique used before but never found a tutorial to do it… until now. Thank you!
SEO-PRO’s last blog post..Web 2.0 for Marketing Dummies
It’s always good to educate people on why hotlinking is not nice. Unfortunately, it will be hard to reach enough people. I used to have a terrible time with myspacer’s hotlinking my images until I started using a similar technique to the one you outline here. Myspace teeny-boppers can chew up bandwidth in a hurry.
Hi David
I would like to be able to tell if my images are being ‘taken’. Is there a way to tell, by bandwidth of visitor? Or some other way. I want to know if images are being scraped, for the purpose of printing as well as for publishing on a website, with the bandwidth usage issue.
I use aswats, webalizer, google anayltics and webmaster to get my stats. I would just like to know how to read which part of those stats analyzers to look at to see if image theft is occurring.
Thanks very much
DJL
Thanks for commenting. See those teeny-boppers? :(
DJ,
You know, I’m not sure how exactly to tell. I’ve yet to come across some easy way of finding out, but perhaps someone else will have an insight.
Cool ;) thats the way to do it. This post went right in my favorites. One time i manually changed an image, because several sites was hotlinking, and you can’t imaging the traffic that gave me :)
Lars Bachmann’s last blog post…I hvilken SEO liga spiller du?