My Stolen Images. How can I make them link?

I found a site where some rat has been stealing several of my images for the last couple months. The guy is img src/referring to the gifs off my server and displaying them on his site.
His site must be busy b/c the stats for those specific images are pretty active.
I'd like to direct that traffic to my site . I don't have access to his .html files, but I can alter the .gifs files he's referring to....

So here's my question for all black hatters.......
Does anyone know how I can make those images link, forward, open a new window, etc., so that they point to the URL of my choice by altering the code within the gif files??
Can anyone enlighten me on this???

Well since he's hotlinking to your images a simple way to advertise your site would be to watermark those images with your URL or anything else you'd like.

I don't think you can do what you want to do, but It would be the perfect opportunity to CS the hell out of his traffic.

there is a way ... you can prevent hotlinking via the htaccess file.
I had done this in the past ... if you are interested about this method ... i will look and see if i can find a guide ... or you just do a google search for:
htaccess prevent hotlinking ... this might give you some results too.

cheers
catman

catman08 said:

there is a way ... you can prevent hotlinking via the htaccess file.
I had done this in the past ... if you are interested about this method ... i will look and see if i can find a guide ... or you just do a google search for:
htaccess prevent hotlinking ... this might give you some results too.

cheers
catman

Click to expand...

You're correct you can stop someone easily from hotlinking your images. If you have a cPanel on your host you can disable with a few simple clicks, or if you prefer to use .htaccess you can use the following code.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?your-domain.com/.*$ [NC]

RewriteRule \.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ - [F]

Wouldnt you be able to rename those pictures, set up a page that would redirect or popup your website and use .htacess to rewrite the page?

Ie:

Person is stealing http://www.site.com/example.gif

Rename that, create a page 'example.html'

then in .htaccess put

So then whenever the page with the stolen image is loaded, it will execute the code in example.html

(although, i dont know if this would work, never tried)


Or you could just rename the picture, add a new one with a huge dimension (like 800x800) with ur url.

@drd26 ... yep nice on that is the way it is done
@soulchief ... this option would also not show the images on your own pages ... you gotta have the referrer rule included

;-)

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I knew I could count on this community for the info.

drd26 - I like the CS idea, but am not sure (yet) how to execute it. Also, since BH has not been my focus (until now), please don't mind this stoopid question; how can I use CS'ing to my advantage...?

soulchief - I understand your idea and it's freakin genious dude! I'll fiddle with it til i get it right and let you know if it/how works.

As far as blocking the traffic, that was one thought, but since the rat's site gets so much traffic, I'd like to turn the tables on him and get some traffic out of the deal....

Again, thanks to all. Very much!

Hey _DeadEyesOpened_, thanks for the CS idea man. I need to get more info on how to set it up and what it can do for me...

Make all of the pictures redirect to hello.jpg from goatse.

yeah, i used to stop linking to the images on my server and then download a bunch of gay pics and rename them to what they were hot linking to... that usually stops it.

goatse is a nice touch though.

hahahaha ... yea redirecting them to an image is pretty cool ... in this way you can also stuff cookies. Make your server interpret the jpg file (of the specific folder you redirect) as php file (done via htaccess modification) ... in this file then you can stuff cookies via a php redirect. The guy stealing the images will see this though ... so be carefully with that ... in fact i am sure he will not use your images directly from the server when he sees this so .. the CS would only work for a very short time

If you decide to CS, the referer will be his website and you will not have enough control over the website to manipulate it for the aff manager tastes. So you may get in trouble.

A slight alteration would be if you could find any products his site may be promoting and stuff those cookies in very limited durations.

Otherwise if the hot linking bandwidth isn't costing you anything just let it be for now you may uncover a way to get something out of it. If it is costly and you can't exploit it, cut him off.

Does he steal the images by robbing your site (using programs such as "Advanced Pic Hunter") or one by one? There is a code to prevent people from right clicking and copying your images but if they want the photos bad enough, all they would have to do is do a "print screen" paste it into a photo editor and crop the photo. Like someone said above, the best way to protect your images is to watermark them.

Someone was using one of my images as their myspace background and getting a TON of traffic so I swapped said img out with tubgirl.

The comments on his profile were awesome

alherd said:

Hey _DeadEyesOpened_, thanks for the CS idea man. I need to get more info on how to set it up and what it can do for me...

Click to expand...

There is a lot of methods right here on this forum that can cookie stuff, read, read, read.

Use the htaccess method.

satan said:

Someone was using one of my images as their myspace background and getting a TON of traffic so I swapped said img out with tubgirl.

The comments on his profile were awesome

Click to expand...

LMAO!

(in creepy Mr. Burns voice from the Simpsons) "Exxxxccccccelent!"