Question: How to find people hotlinking your site?

[misohoni]

I can see from my stats that certain people are hotlinking to certain files. I changed the .htaccess file and did other things such as rename the hotlinked files and then look to see who was still linking to the old version and then banning their IP.

How do I find out what web sites are hotlinking me ?

[sarahk]

What do you mean by hotlinking?
Do you have stats or logging for your site, they should show you who is visiting which pages, from what referrer and ip.

This might also be of interest: http://sarahk.pcpropertymanager.com/blogspam.php

Sarah

[expat]

hi,
if you are "lazy" like me there is a nice tool here to create all required
http://www.htmlbasix.com/disablehotlinking.shtml

I use to send alternative pic's if it starts bothering me and just look at who tried to load that pic in the stats once a week.

You can start to have a lot fun with this I used to send pics with "winner of the lousy webaward" etc....

M

[misohoni]

Expat, thanks. I played around with .htaccess but it doesn't seem to work.
But I'll look at the link you gave.

Sarahhk, thanks. Hotlinking is where a website links to your files (images, movies, music etc.,) and attempts to pass it as their own - whilst using your bandwidth.

My Stats program only records "legal" links. i've got a record of IP's where users are linking to my files directly and I'm able to ban them. But I want to find where the source is so I can contact the webmaster and inform them that should not be hotlinking my files...

[expat]

Expat, thanks. I played around with .htaccess but it doesn't seem to work.Don't forget to exclude your own site from the exclusion.
Your ISP maybe helpful as well as it is even better to include this in the htppd.conf file. If you happen to have or run cpanel it's usually included there.
M

PS here is the link to a good apache tutorial

http://apache-server.com/tutorials/ATimage-theft.html

PPS make sure you close brakets (I see a lot o code snipets where for example [NF is not closed - should be [NF] and have the longer directives on one line. I always switch off word wrap in notepad to make sure.

[Help Desk]

Here's another article.

http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess10.shtml

[debunked]

Expat, thanks. I played around with .htaccess but it doesn't seem to work.
But I'll look at the link you gave.

Sarahhk, thanks. Hotlinking is where a website links to your files (images, movies, music etc.,) and attempts to pass it as their own - whilst using your bandwidth.

My Stats program only records "legal" links. i've got a record of IP's where users are linking to my files directly and I'm able to ban them. But I want to find where the source is so I can contact the webmaster and inform them that should not be hotlinking my files...

Images on your site in your sig file all show up as an X so I think it is working, but not how you want it to.

[sarahk]

You can find out who is doing it by putting images in a locked folder (using .htaccess) and calling them via a php script. The php script then logs the request with the referrer. It also checks the referrer and bans the bad ones. But you are still logging the good ones.

Bear in mind that by using curl I can change the referrer so it looks like I'm at an allowed site, but I can't change my ip.

[misohoni]

Wow thanks guys, I'll go through it.

Sarahk (Hong Kong?), thanks. Where would I be able to find this php script, sounds good.

[sarahk]

Hong Kong? No, I'm in New Zealand

I can get the script for you but there was a similar, easily implemented option in one of those links. I haven't done it but it looks good

http://apache-server.com/tutorials/ATimage-theft.html#logging

The advantage to this approach is you don't have to consider if an image needs protecting, they all are. So you can edit your pages normally. Cool.

Sarah

[vagrant]

dont forget that it may effect google cache ( etc ) pages unless you allow it's ip's.

and often the ip you get will be the person looking at the page NOT the site with a copy, so try NOT to get too paranoide and look where there refearer to the page was to find the image to locate the page they are ariving from... could well be goggle cache or yahoo's one.

[misohoni]

Thanks for the advice. After blocking certain IP's I just realised that...oops!

[hulkster]

I use to send alternative pic's if it starts bothering me and just look at who tried to load that pic in the stats once a week.

You can start to have a lot fun with this I used to send pics with "winner of the lousy webaward" etc....

M

Hulk has had a little bit of fun with this - check out this eBay auction (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=20724&item=4307402913&rd=1) ;-)

[vord]

I think they found you out - the ebay photos look pretty sensible to me (unless the bloke with the smile is doing something to the young lady that I haven't spotted).

:eek:

[misohoni]

maybe it's the little kids...

[hulkster]

Here's is the actual image hot-linked from the eBay auction (http://www.komar.org/bbq/mm/new-stuff/Y0660_2002_Model.jpg) - now go back and look at the eBay Auction (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=20724&item=4307402913&rd=1) ... and look at the photo underneath the text that says it is "THIS IS OVER 6 1/2 FEET LONG ... SOLID STAINLESS COOKING GRATES ... etc." and tell me if the picture below that looks like it matches that description! ;-)

Note that I could put ANYTHING there, but I was nice ...

alek