Everyone who has a website can relate to how frustrating it is to have other sites 'hotlinking' to images or other files on their website. I have tried various ways to stop this practice, but to no avail. I tried blocking the domains (culprits), but that also blocked some legitimate users as well. So had to unblock the offenders. Next I renamed the files and 'edited' (changed the files to something really ugly and put my website address on the files) the hotlinked files. That worked to a point, some of the offenders view their sites more often than others, but one persistant hotlinker just went back and linked to the new file name.
One remedy that worked, I removed the file altogether. Sort of drastic, but that worked. Sure got a lot of 404s after that, though.
Two of the worst offenders for hotlinking are MySpace.com and Xanga.com. Yesterday I had over 500 hits from MySpace, all from hotlinking.
Today I had a friend who is a member of MySpace.com, email four of the known hotlinkers and explain what hotlinking is and how to save images and upload them rather than hotlink. I doubt that will do much good as the people that use MySpace don't have a clue about websites. MySpace is rather notorious for this behavior. I did email them to let them know they have people hotlinking to my site, I got a very stupid reply from them.
Their reply:
Hi there!
We are currently experiencing errors with the I.M. (Instant Messenger), we apologize for the inconvenience. We are currently doing our best to make this service operate properly. Please bear with us, as we anticipate these changes to take place very soon.
Thanks!
MySpace.com
Notice I said I emailed them, I didn't IM them! Guess if they don't like the message they just send a 'dumb' response.
If anyone has a better answer, sure would like to know about it!
Martha
As a footnote here, if the offenders do not remove the hotlink from their pages by January 5, I am going to publish the links to their sites.
Martha's Web
4 comments:
Here is what I would do.
Send a registered letter to the following address:
myspace.com
6060 Center Drive
Suite 300
Los Angeles, CA 90045
In it, state that users from this hosting service are hotlinking, or stealing bandwidth that you pay for, and that you intend to track their usage and bill them for the bandwidth used.
Norm
Ever thought of changing the hotlinked image for another one that the offender wouldn't like or even a 'Hotlinking is Stealing' message ?
They'll get the point eventually and stop doing it :-)
Consider what this Guy did to get people to stop hotlinking:
http://www.planetmut.com/myspacesucks/
You have inspired me to write a tutorial (when i have time) on how to get these setups to remove graphics .. I've been successful with everyone but blogger (hah so far!!!) cos their TOS is well cat poo! Igore that copyright c... er cat poo on myspace ... get stuffy enough and they do rush to delete the offending account not just remove the graphic hee hee.
Don't remove graphics or change file names or ban domains.... it's bad for your seo...
Tina
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