HOTLINK Issue

[ElvisFan]

Please can hostnexus techie offer me some security as I am having a HUGE problem with hostlinking to forums... it seems that visitors are still able to steal images from all my sites... and it is costing me in bandwidth....

I have a lock code on all my pages... alas, the problem is getting worse...
Recently someone scrapped a whole pages to include code links to amazon shopping guide... I redesigned that page... however, it did not solve the problem... even after contacting the host and complaining..

I don't have the time or energy to keep changing my image names and deleting old one from my pages... I have better things to do but chase hotlink theives...

[NexDog]

Are you using .htaccess to protect your images?

http://www.htaccesstools.com/hotlink-protection/

[susannad]

Laurence we have been through the .htaccess solution already but that wasn't able to be done.. there are a few threads on the same topic

ElvisFan the best suggestion I saw was to compress your images - if the images are small it's not a huge b/w drain - and write your url on them. Trying to win against hotlinkers is nigh impossible. Use it as a promotional tool.

[Ski-Whiz]

I've seen some sites able to "watermark" hotlinked images... It displays without the watermark when you pulling it from visiting their site.

So the watermark only displays when it's hotlinked..