Stop Hot Linking and Thieves That Steal Your Images!

Due to an increasing problem with hot linkers I have been forced to block them out. Hot linking is when a person directly links an image from a site to their own. This lets them show tons of images on their own site without actually using any bandwidth. This considered stealing on the online world!

To deal with this problem any hot linker that has used an image from my website will now see the black box. Feel free to use the image for your own use (JUST MAKE SURE YOU DOWNLOAD IT!)

So how do you stop hot linkers from stealing your bandwidth and images from your website? It’s actually really easy all you have to do is edit or create a .htaccess file in your site directory. Use the following code and adjust where needed:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?yoursite\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /hotlink.gif [L]

Make sure the image you want to show on the theft’s website is hosted somewhere NOT in your site directory. Or else you will have a redirect error that will continuously loop over and over again. Also make sure to put a gross image to make the theft’s jump a little. Anyhow this should work for most sites etc have fun =).