Have you heard of hotlinking? It is the first method in which bandwidth is stolen from you by other web designers, and it can cost you a lot of money. It involves creating a direct link to non-HTML files on a website in such a way that these files are embedded in someone else's page.
For example, suppose you created one of the top adult online sites. You have a lot of photos, and visitors love to come to your site. Now imagine that suddenly, even though your user statistics are not increasing, your bandwidth (the amount of data transmitted from your site to viewers) increases. Your server administrators will contact you to let you know that you are submitting 40% more photos than you did last week.
Has your salary increased equally? No. Has the traffic provided by your site increased? No. What happened was that someone, instead of just posting your photos, decided to link to them within his website.
This means that instead of saving your image in their photo directory, they link to the image where it is hosted on your site. At some point in the beginning, in the early development of the web, this was an acceptable solution for image theft, as long as you gave us credit accordingly. Today, with the use of high bandwidth and many images, many with high resolution online, it is unacceptable.
Why Do They Do It?
There are many reasons for image hotlinking. For example, suppose a new relative has started blogging or selling on eBay. They want an image, but be careful enough to know that copying and pasting from the Web site is illegal. So, they see, you will not notice when one person links to your site. Besides, they really need that image.
That is an innocent use, and it is unlikely that it will greatly increase your photo rendering. But what if you were using a heavy site - an art site, for example - and a competitor decides to use images you uploaded to sell his or her posters? That is cruel. And if they use all of your photos, they can double or double your bandwidth usage, without any benefits to you. There are even malicious webmasters who use this as a way to drive competitors out of business, as additional bandwidth is charged by the web host or the site is removed offline. And, unfortunately, it is illegal. However. (Although some web servers will shut down the hotlinking site after complaints.)
A good example is someone who puts cords in his house until he gets to your electric support pole. They do not pay for your electricity bill - but you do pay for it. Many hotlinkers try to imagine that what they are doing is really like cable theft - not at all, as cable users pay a lower price for all the resources they are using - or similar to using someone else's wireless connection. Not only is this not true, but hotlinking is more traceable than any of these examples. All it takes is patience and a good Google search.
Am I Hotlinking?
If you directly link to any image or other non-HTML file that is not hosted on your website, and you do not have permission from the website administrator to do so, you are linking. Wherever you see a link that starts src = ”http: //” that continues to list a domain that does not belong to you, you are linking. The bandwidth to provide this image was not charged to you, but to the person who stole it from you. Check out the electric simulation above!
You can capture photos and other files from your photo directory, or you can upload them to a free photo server that says at its usage limits you are allowed to link to the hotlink. If not, don't just do it.
Although it is difficult to prosecute people with hotlinking, there are ways to punish them. For example, some webmasters use "switcherroo" - they exchange the image you are stealing with something offensive, obscene, or disgusting. For example, they change the beautiful flower you used on the head with one limb - or with a boy with a sign that says, "This person steals the bandwidth." Whenever you use a hotlink, you leave your site open to someone else to modify it.
There are hotlink test tools that can check links to one of your images at a time to see if they have been stolen - or to see if they are safe from hotlink links. This includes sites that allow you to enter the URL of your image in its own way; the next page will contain or will not contain your image. If you do, you know you are in danger. If you need more photos to check, you may have to pay for the service to do so.
But there is a much easier way to do it, if you have time to check out all your photos. Just start a Google search to find the full URL link. When anyone embed the URL of your image on their page, it will appear in the URL search. At that point, you get to manage any proper adjustments - switcheroo, warn webmaster, or complain to the web host.
You can protect your photos, movies, sounds, etc. on the connection by properly using the .htaccess file again, or by talking to your server administrator. Always check with the administrator before uploading an .htaccess file.
What Else Should I Know About Hotlinking?
While there are a few official stores to complain about hotlinking right now, it is certain that in the future this will be a very serious case. Instead of hotlinking, email webmasters with your favorite content and see if they'll let you use their content to get a link back to their website; because of the number of links back, many will agree. Protect your photos, and even if you do have them, check them regularly. And to prevent cheating, read about tagging your important photos.
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