Posted by Grant Collier on August 4, 2007 at 2:34 PM
I've found a site that creates code for disabling unauthorized hot linking of your images on other web sites. You just add this code to your .htaccess file. You can still allow sites like naturephotographers.net to hot link. Here's the URL: http://www.htmlbasix.com/disablehotlinking.shtml.
You can replace the image they're attempting to hot link with a default image. If you want to allow certain images (such as your banner) to be hot linked, add this code above the bottom two lines:
Over the last year or two, I've started (for better or for worse) to get a large number of people finding my images through Google image search. So I decided to try and find people who were stealing the images. I quickly found about ten sites by searching for the file names of my most popular images. I'm sure I would have found a lot more if I didn't disable right-clicking, disable the image toolbar, and not allow Google to open my images inside their frames. This new code should also help, but there's no way to prevent it entirely.
I'm curious if anyone has any other suggestions for finding stolen images. I've heard someone say you can embed a random string of letters in an image's metadata and then search for that random string. But I'm not aware of any search engines that search for an image's metadata.
Most of the sites stealing images are non-commercial, but I have found two commercial travel sites using my images. I plan to send them a payment link to pay for the stolen images through PayPal (of course they won't). And while suing them is tempting, it would be too much of a hassle.
Discussion
0 repliesYou can replace the image they're attempting to hot link with a default image. If you want to allow certain images (such as your banner) to be hot linked, add this code above the bottom two lines:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/YOURIMAGENAME.jpg$ [NC]
Over the last year or two, I've started (for better or for worse) to get a large number of people finding my images through Google image search. So I decided to try and find people who were stealing the images. I quickly found about ten sites by searching for the file names of my most popular images. I'm sure I would have found a lot more if I didn't disable right-clicking, disable the image toolbar, and not allow Google to open my images inside their frames. This new code should also help, but there's no way to prevent it entirely.
I'm curious if anyone has any other suggestions for finding stolen images. I've heard someone say you can embed a random string of letters in an image's metadata and then search for that random string. But I'm not aware of any search engines that search for an image's metadata.
Most of the sites stealing images are non-commercial, but I have found two commercial travel sites using my images. I plan to send them a payment link to pay for the stolen images through PayPal (of course they won't). And while suing them is tempting, it would be too much of a hassle.