Phishing Site had Hot-Linked images from my website. Will it affect my site's ranking

Some Phishing Site had Hot-Linked images from my website and I came to know about that in the Access Logs.

I reported the Phishing Site to Google, PayPal, in.com and JotForm..

Will the hot-linking of images from my site affect the ranking/reputation of my site?

I have mentioned the details of Phishing Site (site on blogspot) and how was the images used etc in my Blog:
http://lokeshsays.blogspot.com/2009/01/phishing-site-is-using-image-from-my.html

Please tell me will harm me in any way? legal issues etc..

 

Most hosts have features to prevent hotlinking, finding that and using it will be your best bet. I'm not sure if it will effect your google results but it's something you can prevent so you may as well do it.

 

This is a very good question.

I sincerely doubt Google would penalize sites that are victims of hotlinking. The image tag is obviously different from the anchor tag. From what we know of link popularity and how Google uses it, they only pay attention to the anchor tag.

 

Thanks Kiri... I know the feature about blocking Hot-Linking of Images.. But I use some images in my own different sites.

But the Hot-Linking Disable feature does not allow us to block hot-linking from selected directories.. Its all or none block.. Here I can use the different URLs to allow Hot-Linking.. But some times I send Images/photos in Email and I cant add each URL of the email website to the exclusion list..

Thanks CTThompson, Google penalizing is not a big problem.. The real problem is Legal one.. Police can question me and ask whether I'm in any connection with the Phishing Website makers.

 

Replace the image with one that says that the site is a scam. Have some fun with them. They'll eventually drop your image and steal another one.

 

I suggest you to use htaccess and use mod_rewrite instead.
But a normal hotlinking feature on any server would be enough.

 

How to use (I mean what code) should I add to htaccess?

 

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?domain.com(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|bmp)$ http://domain.com/no.jpe [R,NC]

This rewrite all linking to gif,jpg,jpeg and bmp files *not* comming from domain.com to the file no.jpe

 

If your host uses cPanel you won't even need to write a code to allow your sites and block any other site.

However, not quiet sure if it would harm or not.

 

expand the above section to include more domains.
Just duplicate and replace domainname.