help please what are these in my stats??????

[Rich]

http://www.tt1069.com/bbs/viewthread.php
http://forum.ngaytho.info/index.php
http://www.bbs65.com/

i have a lot of referals from these websites in my stats and it looks like they are just linking to my site pictures without any of the pages how is this possible and what do i do to stop it from happening it looks like they are sending hundreds and hundreds of visitors a day to my pictures for free and not seeing any banners i have on my sites

[Bill]

They're hotlinkers from scumbag surfer forums.

And they can cost you a lot of money of you are not careful.

You need to update your htaccess to block hotlinking.

Google "how to block hotlink" or something similar to get the lines of code you need to put in an htaccess file to stop this.

[maxx68]

Depending on your hosting account, some hosting companies offer "hotlinking" protection.

What they are doing is essentially linking to your pics while you host them, so they use the content and you pay for the hosting. I would contact them and let them know they had better stop or you're gonna let everyone know.

[Bill]

Contacting those surfer boards is pretty much a waste of time Max.

But contacting your host and getting them to set up hotlink protection is a good plan.

A lot of adult-ready hosts provide that as a matter of course.

[Rich]

thank you for the help with this i am putting a htaccess no hotlink on my domain name now to stop this

i wish i had knew about putting this up before!

[Bec]

it's actually a lot more fun to serve up an image to anyone hotlinking ... something like -- Thieving Scumbags on a pic big enough to wreck the board-- or an image with a big url to your paysite on it.

[Lee]

True enough Bec but then its still going to cost him bandwidth and im guessing that is the major issue he has right now

But yeah, i love serving pics of TubGirl to hotlinkers... Its funny to see how quickly they pull the hotlinked urls LOL

Regards,

Lee

[Bec]

Yea - but it's bw usage only til they see what's going on and pull the links

[GayGeek]

How do those of you that have an RSS feed deal with hotlinking? I don't even run explicit pictures on my website but have had a problem with hotlinking. If I disallow anyone from remotely accessing pictures though then people using blog reading software can't get my RSS feed.

--Aaron

[HunkyLuke]

oh no the chinese are coming the chinese are coming!!!

[derekt]

LOL @ Luke!

Hey Rich, have you thought about a password abuse protection service?
We had this problem as well with hotlinking. We signed up with PhantomFrog.com with the trial and were absolutely impressed with the outcome that we signed up. We've been with PhantomFrog.com now for several months and WILL NOT leave unless Frog should go out of business and will stand firm on their product.
We've had password abuse, brute force attacks, and members to come in using a download accelerator program. PhantomFrog eliminated ALL OF THIS.

I at least suggest the trial. It's free to use the trial and I am sure you will be impressed as we were in this product.

It is very afordable and in my eyes a great service. Here's more info on what we use: http://phantomfrog.com/faq.php

[Bec]

Is that akin to the Strongbox software Derek?

[derekt]

Hi Bec! :dog:
I am not too sure as to what you are asking.

I've never experienced Strongbox.

[Bill]

It's a different deal Derek. He's not getting hit by passworders, but by pic theives, stealing his server bandwidth from his freesites.

Different level of business. But hotlinkers can eat up your money in a highly crappy way.

[Rich]

just wanted to say that since i put the no hotlinking up this has stopped thank you for the help again!