Direct linking also known as hotlinking where a person uses the image source link on their site instead of hosting it on their own space, is a very common problem. Direct link steals not just the fact that the image was made by another person, but that very person’s bandwidth. Those that pay for their site diskspace and bandwidth have a problem as this drains their bandwidth. If they run out for the month, they face site suspension until the end of the month or paying out of their pocket for extra bandwidth.
To combat this problem, there are several ways to deal with the situation:
1. Contact the webmaster responsible for the problem and inform them that you do not allow people to direct link your images. Give them 72 hours (3 days) to correct the problem. If they do use the image, remind them to give credit back to you.
2. If you cannot contact the webmaster at all whether it is by no response back or no email address given, contact their webhost. Both paid webhosts and freeserver hosts have similar policies on stealing and will either inform the webmaster or immediately remove the problem.
3. If you own your website and have some type of control panel with a Hotlink Protection feature, use that and disbable the ability to allow others to direct link.
4. You can go the mischievous way and give your direct linker an eyeful by creating an image that says something like ‘Stop Stealing my Images’ or ‘Stop Direct Linking’ and replace the image that is being hotlinked while renaming the image that was direct linked to something else. That image will show up on the culprits site and is sure to be removed. If you cannot make a graphic or want to use something, I made the image below and use it. By the way, save it to your own computer or I can make something even cruder.
Do you have any other suggestions?
I have been facing this problem of bandwidth hope your suggestion work for me
Oi… I’m actually guilty of this.. I didn’t know it was bad.. I mostly do this when posting on forums… Thanks for the heads up!
Hi Niles,
I am never aware of this one but on my case, i upload the file either on my photobucket account or in blogger and give credit to the owner of the image
great blog…thanks for your h is the way foreward for me to disbable the ability to allow others to direct link with me
I didn’t even think this could be a problem but it makes sense, I will look out for it. I like your idea of renaming the image and putting a cheeky image in it’s place.
You would be surprised. I do have issues with hotlinkers on some of my free images and also using direct download links from my site rather than sending people to my site to download graphics and my php scripts.
I totally agree! That idea of changing the image is hillarious.
People don’t think of direct linking as stealing, but that is exactly what it is. As you point out, they do more than just steal your image, they steal your bandwidth. I can’t really imagine that becoming a huge issue where it crashes servers or anything, but hey, it could happen!
Hi Nile,
thank you for creating an awareness about this.
This is puzzling me:
I still don’t fully understand, do they use an image you uploaded to the web on their site and then add a link to it?
I appreciate your suggestions to take care of it (once I know what it is I am taking care of and if I need to 🙂 )
I have learnt that these hotlinking can slow down the webpages of sites hosting the images.
That is an interesting challenge. I have not had that big of a challenge with bandwith, but I can definitely see as my site get’s more and more traffic how that can affect you. If you really need a picture in today’s world why not just use photobucket or some other photo sharing site?
Hi Andy! Unfortunately photobucket and other photo sharing sites are much like Facebook is about image hosting. If your image is offensive in any way to them or violates their terms, they will remove it. That does include terms to download and if your image is popular and you are encouraging people to download from photobucket or other similar sites, you are stealing their bandwith.
For me, it is not an option. I have over 1,000 free graphics here and also my 2 popular PHP scripts. I had tried having me free scripts hosted elsewhere, but the bandwidth was so high there, I brought it back to my own server.
Ya, hotlinking is really a kind of digital theft and is so uncool to see people holinking pics from my server. Well, i;ve hear that hotlinking a pic will help to show up tat pic in the image search! is it true?
Nile, those are some very useful tips! I don’t hotlink as I don’t want to deal with images that were taken out or replaced. How do you find out if your images are being hotlinked? And how do you determine who’s hotlinking?
In PHP is is very easy to solve with .htaccess where you can redirect external traffic for an image to another image of page.
I’ve got a website for my online art portfolio, and although it doesn’t have much traffic yet, a few people have hotlinked to my images. On the one hand, a few people found my art website through the hotlink, so that’s good promotion. But then bandwidth is another issue…
I like the image you made 😛
hello
i m totally agree with u nice article i found it intresting really very imformative for my blod god work keep it up and i like the articles
I have had the same issue in the past but I had not realize that it could be really harmful. Thanks for the advice
Photo sharing sites are much like Facebook is about image hosting. If your image is offensive in any way to them or violates their terms, they will remove it. That does include terms to download and if your image is popular and you are encouraging people to download from photobucket or other similar sites, you are stealing their bandwith –
this is a really nice post, i never quit got the idea with .htaccess but you made it a little less cloudy 🙂
great how the tuts are getting better in quality over time here at hongkiat 🙂