What you should do is provide your picture via a php script. If the request is your site, show your content otherwise show the ad. You can do this only if the REFERER have been accessing your site more than a few time, so the person linking does not even know about it

You’re still picking up the bandwidth bill though. Another approach is to edit your server’s .htaccess file to just refuse the image request from someone else’s server.

That’s a good idea, but you could also use your .htaccess file to prevent things from being hotlinked as well, and than use one generic image to be shown on the hotlinking sites. This is a artivle on it if you are hosted on a linux server and have apache …(http://underscorebleach.net/jotsheet/2004/11/stop-image-hotlinking-tutorial-htaccess-apache)

One way you can get around this is to serve your images via PHP script. The PHP script would check the domain of the referring page, and if it is adsensecheats.com, it would serve the image fine. But if the domain is something else, it would either display a generic ‘adsensecheats.com’ image, or else it would display a ‘branded’ copy of the image (this could be done dynamically).

I haven’t actually done this myself, but I have heard of it being done, and it was a topic I researched while working on an image repository and training system for Children’s Hospital of Michigan.

Hope this helps.

Hi, thanks all.
I’m going to try the php script thingy, but I’m new in php, so might take some time to learn.

I’ve had a similar experience, but decided to use another approach, to shame the guy into submission. I tried contacting friendster.com, but have yet to recieve a response.

I posted about it here: http://www.koudal.dk/hotlink-revenge-dont-steal-bandwidth

Actually that article was posted by my friend on http://www.thila.ropage.com/ and he informed me about this article
and than i posted that article on http://desi-tek.com . I was not aware about the origin of the content. i just modified that article and added your name and your site url in source. And i apologise for not adding source as i was not aware.

and codding it with php is not a complete sollution as any 1 can save that page upload images on any image hosting site and than any body can publish it on that site.

i mean their site

serving them your ads and paying for the bandwidth isn’t so bad at all. Since I did it on MySpace accounts who were sucking my bandwidth by hotlinking to images my traffic has increased somewhat significantly…

i just never liked paying for their visual enjoyment lol.

Great stuff, one more for the good guys Dont’ get even get advertising.

use a .htaccess file - much easier. eg:


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


The first line obviously means you don’t block your own site, the second is an example of adding another website to allow them to hotlink your images, and that last line determines which type of files are blocked and the image that is displayed instead when someone tries to hotlink one of those files (note extension is .jpe).

Save this file as .htaccess (yes, it starts with a .) and place it in your main directory - anything in that directory (including other directories within it) will be dealt with.

bah.. didn’t display very well. first line:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?YOURWEBSITE\.com/ [NC]

next line:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?SOMEALLOWEDWEBSITE\.com/ [NC]

next line:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

next line:
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /path relative to htaccess file/ALTERNATEIMAGE.jpe [L]