I have tried various substitute images (using mod-rewrite in htaccess) but the one I find most satisfying to me is one that rapidly alternates black-white and says NO HOTLINKS in red-blue. This could induce a seizure if viewed for a time. Check out this forum (message with the hotlink to an image at my site is down a ways). If you are prone to seizures, please ignore this link.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1936364/posts?q=1&;page=251

Depending on the topic of the message, substituting hard porn can be a real comic relief for the webmaster whose image is being linked.

I have just learned how to use basic HTML and tutorials/advices like the one above is a russian village for me – I do not understand how to do that although I am pretty sure that it is a good advice. BTW, english is not my primary language so…
So, what to do? A beginer as I am can only rename images from time to time (it takes 100 years to do it!) so hotlinkers get crosses and broken links in stead of each stolen image.

Or I can continue explaining people why it is wrong to do it. Actualy about 75% hotlinkers do not know that they are doing anything wrong. When they rightclick on an image, they can normaly choose “copy” and “paste” – so why not?!

I have seen websites where hotlinkers have been called some very bad names and put on some “Black lists” etc. That is wrong. Sometimes people are called hotlinkers because they host their images on Photobucket/Imageshac and “prof” webmasters who do not know these services think that they are hotlinking without permition – stealing.

It is a great idea to share advices how to protect files from hotlinking – although not everybody can understand these procedures and finaly they are not 100% secure.
It could also be very useful to explain people, whenever it is possible, what hotlinking is, why to avoid it and how to host images and other files. As told, a lot of hotlinkers are stealing other peoples bandwidth without knowing that they are doing something very bad.
Therefore, every webmaster should have a little explanation about hotlinking on his/her site.
Cheers!

I own my own win2K server and really depend on it to protect my bandwidth from thieves, be it rouge sites hot linking or direct URL entry to a file into the browesers address line.

Picture hotlinks, sure, not cool, but pffff.
Try protecting tens of thousands of giant (average size 20MB, but many over 100MB) files you limit with a member based daily download count.

Years ago when most users were on dialup it wasnt’t an issue.
With most everyone on my sites now on broadband, cheating can do some really serious finicial damage to an already high bandwidth bill.

This program is free and pretty easy to set the “rules”.
I think my text based config file is only like 12 lines, but it sure does a lot.

Hot linked images are replaced with a tiny (2K I think) 2 color “image thief” pic.
The important thing for me of course is not letting people get the huge .zip files (which are free, but only so many a day) if they don’t jump through the hoops, and the main one being logged on and using my download pop-up page, and my check is via referer.

If their referer tag does not match the exact url for it plus a special tag, no file is sent, they get sent on a journey via a redirect at the server level via isapi/rewrite that… well…
lets just say the harder they try to rob me, the nastier the road gets until it ends up they get totally IP banned from the server via global.asp code, which redirects on it’s own to nice little nastygram page ;-}

What concerns me is what I’m seeing about “referer spoofing” ability mods for Firefox.
I have no concern with a guy masking his users referrer, he won’t get the file legit or not, what concerns me is the posibility that it might now be possible for firefox guys to actually fake the required referer tag for my site to send him the file and bypass everything if he has the file name and path right from the browser address line.

I’ll explore that, I just thought I’d give you Win2K server guys a good tip.

KC

As I think about it more and more it seems like I should rewrite with some stupid picture. It must be much more confusing to try to link to something and get the wrong picture than it is to link and get nothing…

Come to think of it as well, another funny way to fight back, you could redirect back to an image hosted by the hotlinker.

But ultimately, yeah, you’re right, if you really want to get someone to stop, some wierd image that they don’t want is the best way to go. You’re better off throwing a 403 before you get someone hotlinking since they probably won’t bother with the hotlink if it doesn’t work in the first place.

Naturally, this will only discourage people from hotlinking. If they already have, or if the problem is that they’re causing TONS of hits to your site, then the rewrite to a 404 (Lucas’ example) will only result in your bandwidth being eaten up like mad.