**After posting this earlier and linking to two of Ben's pictures, I googled Hotlinking and found out what it means. I've since removed the pictures. Sorry Ben. If your pictures have tags to prevent this, it didn't work.
I was reading a post by Ben and his dilema surrounding posting pictures on his blog.
What picqued my curiosity was the bit about "anti-hotlinking tag". I've never heard of the term and I'm wondering what it is, and more importantly what does it do? I thought it would prevent someone from stealing his pics and posting them on their page, so I decided to try it.
The picture featured here is one of Ben's. (I've since removed the picture). The "anti-hotlinking tag" isn't doing what I thought it would do.
Ok I'm going to try and post another one of his pics. Maybe that one didn't have the tag.
Removed Picture. Ok then, I've managed to post two of his pictures in different formats, so what is that tag for?
Maybe Ben will tell me.
4 comments:
Hot linking:
If you see a pic on my blog and pinch it to put on your blog, then there's no prob, because to view the pic they are using YOUR bandwidth.
If you see a pic on my blog and just put a hyperlink to it, like...'click here to see this pic' and a thousand people (as if!) click the link, they are using MY bandwidth to view the pic.
I may be completley wrong, but I think that's what it means.
Try linking directly to one of his pics to see if you can.
BTW: Nice to see you back here.
I think it did work. I had linked to one of his pics. I was in the middle of googling Hotlinking when you responded. Hehehehhee, and then removed the pics because I wouldn't want to do that to someone. Nice to be back, and very nice to see you! ;o)
I think the anti-hotlinking tag is the (C) message at the bottom of Ben's image.
I've got something in my htaccess file that should stop hotlinking (but I'd appreciate someone giving it a go to check it works!)
The safest thing you can do to post a cool picture is to copy it to a picture hosting site (Photobucket.com is my favorite), then post the link to your copy.
Antihotlinking tricks include changing the picture to something else. (Once that happened on a message board I was a part of - a gal hotlinked a perfectly innocent picture, and it got changed to hardcore porn. The really unfortunate part was that this message board didn't give you the ability to modify your posts once made - it was there forever or until one of the invisible moderators bothered to show up.) Sometimes the real picture will be replaced with just the dreaded red X, or a new picture that makes reference to the poster being a bandwidth thief.
I wish I knew how to protect my avatars from being used from where I store them.
-- Pierette
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