blocking image leeches

[WoodrowFan]

I found some freeper (!) is using an image from my website on his signature line. (it's a nonpolitical image). Is there a simple script I can add in to my pages to block such uses. I don't care if someone wants to rightclick to save an image for themselves, I just don't want my bandwidth being used by somebody looking to make a snazzy sig line.

[danostuporstar]

1. Assuming you're running on apache...

http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess10.shtml

[WoodrowFan]

2. thanks

alas, it didn't work, I wonder why. hummm.

I did change mydomain to, well, the name of my webpage.

[Xithras]

3. Get even!

He's using it as a sig image? Delete the pic off your site and replace it with another image with the same name and dimensions. If I may make a suggestion: gay porn, that goatsex picture that's been floating around for years, or text describing his desire to carnally explore George Bush :)

Whatever image you put there will show up in his posts instead...EVERY post that he made using your image:evilgrin:

[alfredo]

5. Have him advertise a very embarrassing perversion.

his love of roadkill necrophilia would do the trick.

[madeline_con]

7. just a question....

wouldn't this only work if the person (leech) was linking directly to the image on said site?

If they saved it to their computer, then posted, it would be whatever originally appeared there, correct?

Or am I just terribly confused?

[brainshrub]

4. How would you know if someone is leeching?

Suppose someone was leeching an image on a site I would never normally visit: Like a site dedicated to taxidermy.

Is there a way to detect leeching?

[Xithras]

6. Yes and no.

Your logfiles should show you how many times a particular image has been displayed, as well as how many times the page with that image has been viewed. If your image shows 15,000 hits but the page with the image has only been viewed 30 times, it's a pretty good indicator that someone is reusing your images elsewhere.

Alternatly, you can parse your logfiles and look for mismatching IP's. If an IP is requesting an image but hasn't requested any of the other pages on your site, that's another solid indicator that you're being leeched.

Figuring out where and by who is a bit harder.

[madeline_con]

8. Thanks. That's great info.

[mainegreen]

9. If your feeling clever

you could always serve up your images through script like so:

<img src="somepage.php?image=my_mom.gif">

where somepage.php (or asp or whatever) looks at the referring url, and if its the same site as your site, the page will read and echo out the file requested in the GET. Downside is it is a bit more processor intensive, but if thats not an issue this would work.