An end to hotlinking to my blog!
Readers please be advised: This blog is no longer being posted on. If you wish please visit my new blog Eccentric Reality. Or alternatively you can contact me on twitter.
I am very dissapointed that it has had to come to this however recently after trawling through the first 15 months of web statistics for my blog I realised that a vast number of sites were hotlinking to images on my blog.
This means that they are stealing the bandwidth that I pay for, and (in some cases) using the images as they were not originally intented for and other cases using the images for inappropriate purposes.
So I am sad to say that I have now had to turn on hotlink protection on my blog and so anywhere someone has linked to a photo on my blog you will now see the image to the left.
I know it is harsh… I know that it is evil and I will be following up on any ones that I become aware of. I recently found one site that has caused a fair additional amount of bandwidth use on my blog in recent months.
So I wanted to post an apology to everyone here for having to go to this length but I realised the only way for me to stop this was to stop this was to take a harsh stance (and after some time has passed I will just change that image to something a tad more pleasant).
Finally I just wanted to post a reminder that the majority of images that I use on this blog are obtained from iStockPhoto and are licenced images. If you would like to use any of the images on my site (my personal photos or otherwise) all I ask is that you contact me first so that I can ensure there are no copyright issues with the photo you wish to use and so that I am aware of its use.
Current Status
After putting this image re-ridrection in place less than 24 hours ago, two of the offending sites have already removed the images so my scare tactic seems to work *yaay*. In all honesty I don’t really want to have to follow up on actually requesting any payments… I just want the damn images removed LOL.
If you are so inclined you can see the ones i have discovered thus far at the Hotlinking Notification Page. So far the most common image ripped off is my You Comment I Follow image. Oh and my favourite is one person passing one of my images off as their holiday photo… yea… no kidding HAHA.
To my regular loyal readers I do apologise for this once again. We will resume regular programming tomorrow.
Stuart 
How did you find the sites that were hotlinking?
Rodney Olsens last blog post..Riding out an attack
Hi Rodney,
If you have a look at this image that I took from awstats you will notice that the top few entries have data in all four colums. Basically the first two colums relate to page loads and the second two to hits.
Therefore when I had hits to the server with no page load (as you can see from the geekyhabitat entries which are valid hotlinks between my sites) there was no actual page load just hits to files on the server.
That was how I was able to pick up on it. Oh and the image is here –> http://www.secludedhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/awstats.png
Cheers
Stuart
The only problem is that the hotlink images also show up in Google Reader!
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Thanks for that Ben, as per our chat I have reset the hotlinking this morning (due to a different issue). As it is now working I can only think that perhaps it was related to a similar issue I was having.
Also if anyone is getting this message on a legitimate source please let me know and I can look into fixing that too.
Cheers
Stuart
I don’t blame you for doing it. You have to protect what you pay for.
ImitationAngels last blog post..How Do I Thank Thee…
Heya ImitationAngel,
Thanks so much for that. You know I really was expecting a big backlash to this (but so far the response has been good) and on top of that people are already starting to remove the offending hotlinks LOL.
Stuart
Hey just like ImitationAngel you are just right in taking right action in preventing other people from leeching your bandwidth and images. Personally I am very particular with the ones I use.
keithmaxxs last blog post..Natsume Yuujinchou Review
Stuart, I’d say it’s a good move by you. Hotlinking is bad for your server
Iss last blog post..A Link List Widget As A Horizontal Menu Bar
@Keithmaxx – It is very true, I was just preparing the images for tomorrow’s What if Wednesday (by the way it is going to be a whopping awesome one this week so stay tuned), and I was having to add watermarks on each one (as now hotlinking is turned off I have to attempt to stop people downloading the licensed images and just re-using them).
@Is – not only bad for the server (well bandwidth anyhoo) but my blog’s reputation as well (especially as some of the images were being used in inappropriate contexts).
Stuart
I cant believe people took your pictures of your holiday that is soooo funny
Hi Trisha,
Yea tell me about it, just goes to show what some people are like *sigh*.
Stuart
Yay for getting those moochers!
fragilehearts last blog post..Monday Madness: October Top Visitors
Hehe yep, and they seem to be removing them. Having said that I have also had close to 500 hits on that image from the re-direct since I put it in earlier this week. So there are still a lot of sites doing it LOL.
I am sorry to hear that, yeah, I appreciate what you do to protect your bandwith
Yea, it does make life difficult Jage, I just wish I did not have to go to such extremes.
How did you do that? I have a similar problem as you. Way much bigger that they also copy my posts @_@
Hi Riyanne,
There is a function in CPANEL (the web hosting control panel I use, called “Hotlink Protection” it allows you to do this really easily.
Unfortunately it only covers image hotlinking not the copying of entire posts.
Cheers
Stuart
I wonder how would you get these $10 bucks from hotlinkers (is this how you call hotlinking guys?)
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