Hotlinking is defined as the placing of a linked object, often an image, from one site in a web page belonging to a second site. By Wikipedia.
Are you wondering who this “article” is directed at? To all who hotlinks images, downloads files and what not from other people, from people who are kind enough to share their creations. If you are looking for content for your own site, go make them yourself. In addition, the thing about these people are that even when they are stealing images and other files from other people, they linked them directly. Moreover, what do they steal even more? Bandwidth. I do not have much patience for people like this. If you are one, continue reading on as it might knock some sense into you how wrong it is.
The reason I am writing this is because I’m a victim of these people and am trying to vent my anger. My motive – If they want to play with me, I will play with them. Stealing bandwidth is a big no, the person you are stealing from is paying for those and it is not very nice to do that while stealing their work. There are a few ways “victims” will do after those hotlinkers get on their nerve. I think it is interesting to see how different people react to hotlinkers. I for one will use the “silent method” to block my images and files from being linked by another site. So, if a person is hotlinking my image, it just will not show up anymore. Some people on the other hand, will create a replacement image in place of the hotlinked one. Different people handle it differently. Some will choose to use a small image while others will make a huge banner with the text “Shame on you for hotlinking to site-name-here” or something like that. The main motive is to shame the other party. There is another interesting way some people will do IF they have a lot of bandwidth to share. They will upload a huge image so that the hotlinked site will take forever to load and then hang the browser. This does happens though.
If you do need to prevent hotlinking on your site, a .htaccess will do the trick nicely. I found a website that could create a .htaccess file for you based on the options you have choose. I do hope this will help you.
What would you do when someone linked your files or images? I would love to hear how you deal with these people so feel free to share your thoughts about this.
9 September, 2009 at 4:55 am
I am a great fan of .htaccess and mod_rewrite and I like to break hotlinked images rather than serve an alternative. Sometimes I allow empty referers, sometimes I don’t. It depends. If it’s a photo I took, generally I don’t, because I want the image to be seen in the context of the page I put it on, with my copyright and terms of use, contact details, etc.
21 July, 2009 at 4:43 am
Hi there, first time on the site and I have to tell you the layout is delighful.
Here is a little free advice about hotlinking:
You know, the thing about hotlinking goes a little like this:
They are doing something bad to you, so the temptation is there to do something bad right back. Resist this temptation.
If you link something truly profane in place of the images that they are hotlinking from you, you can find yourself in trouble. All they have to do is say that they didn’t do it on purpose, and suddenly you are an awful person in the eyes of everyone who does’t really understand what hot-linking is.
A replacement image is perfectly fine, and I suggest it, but keep it lightweight and polite in nature.
The whole slow down their site using huge loads from your server thing is SO tempting, but in the US that could be considered cyber-terrorism, so keep that in mind. ;-)
Another note: Always, and I mean it: ALWAYS allow empty referrers. Casual surfers don’t intentionally hide their referring URLs, but a great many software programs will do so on their behalf without them ever knowing it. If you find yourself trying to talk to one of these folks when they have usability issues on your site, you will find that they don’t even know which programs are running on their computer… truly hopeless as far as walking them through a fix. :sad:
For those people who are sophistcated enough to implement the PHP solution from: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/hotlinking/
… there is something to consider:
One: Unless you have a dedicated server, you can find yourself using enough processor power to get yourself kicked off of a shared host.
Just something to consider.
Anyway, the post is very true, and I understand your pain. Thanks for saying something and letting some of your readers know they aren’t alone in their feelings.
DN.
11 June, 2006 at 1:50 am
Embarassing people is the way to go for me. Not only is the person taking something of yours, but they dont even have the decency to find their own server to put it on! I opt for phalluses all over the page. Of course the people who hotlink always run to remove the images and then act like they dont know what you’re talking about. smh. I typically get more upset at the bandwidth than the actual image (as long as its a generic bg or something and not one of me or something I made).
17 January, 2006 at 10:48 pm
Reply to Sanne:
That’s interesting. I know of some people who use those silly images that shame the hotlinker to no end though. You’re welcome. Hope it would be of use to someone.
Reply to Asia:
I also only know how to use .htaccess to deal with the problem. No worries, it works beautifully if we put the rewrite rules for that before the WordPress rules and permalinks will still work as well as before.
Reply to Aneesah:
I’ve read that article too, that’s a pretty good idea but unless it’s a big big big problem I’m lazy to do that
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17 January, 2006 at 7:50 pm
I haven’t had this problem myself — at least not that I know of — but some time ago I came across an article at A List Apart about another method of hotlinking protection. I haven’t tried it (or even finished reading the article, I think -.- ) but it’s worth checking out.
17 January, 2006 at 3:21 am
I like Sanne’s tactic. I think that embarrassing hotlinkers is the best way to show them that you mean business. People just don’t seem to understand that it is no different from stealing a tangible object. It’s ridiculous. HTACCESS is pretty much the only way I know how to deal with the problem. Be careful if you edit your HTACCESS file. WordPress might act up afterwards. Just re-update your permalinks again.
17 January, 2006 at 12:11 am
Actually hotlinking is a crime. You are stealing bandwidth from someone who paid for it. I haven’t created a .htaccess file for it, because until now I haven’t had problems with those people, and I link some stuff from my domain. But thanks for the useful link!
Quite funny!
A girl I know online used big sexual images to replace the hotlinked files