avatars and hijacking

[TessaB]

Hello

Over Christmas I finally got to download my weblogs. Realising I had had over 2000 visits from the Everton supporters forum I went to investigate. It turned out that one of their members had been using a picture from my site as an avatar.

It involved a fair amount of data transfer and made it more difficult to understand the graphs. I moaned and it got changed.

What do members do about other sites that link to theirs instead of copying the picture on to their own server? A lot of forums are picking up my pictures and putting them on their weblogs. I have changed the pictures so they are no longer there but they still register as hits.

Is this a problem that has been discussed before? If it is then perhaps you could point me in the right direction.

Tessa

[Corey Bryant]

This is called hotlinking. Do a search on this forum for some different methods.

(You should have created a small image & rpeleced the one the person was stealing - saying something like - this image is being stolen. I have seen that 1,000s of times.)

[TessaB]

Hi Corey

Thanks, actually over the year it was over 20,000 visits.

Tessa
www.character-toys.co.uk

[Corey Bryant]

You also might want to contact the forum owner and tell them what is happening. They should remove it for you

[Chief Blogster]

Tessa, I am relatively new here but not new to ecommerce. I am assuming that you are an ecommerce site (based on the category) ... if that is the case why wouldn't you want the traffic?

Untargeted as it may be, for the cost of data transfer of an icon the 20,000 visitors you receive has to be cost effective.

Just a thought.

Arthur

[steve0]

If it is only a single image used as an avatar rename the original image to something else and create a new 1 pixel x 1 pixel clear gif in the name of the image used as a avatar. (then change your references to the original name to the new image name) We actually make a 16x16 image that says "stolen from ClientDomainName"

Stopping the hot liking is difficult.. Most hot links we found didn't put a courtesy link back to the site where the images was found. So make the most of the situation by promoting the domain on the graphic.

When that started happening to product images on our clients' sites, we used mod_rewrite to alter the outgoing picture to a 320x240 b&w graphic stating:
'This product can be purchased at ClientDomain.com'
and in a smaller font at the bottom.. 'This image was used without permission'

To address blogster.
I believe in TessaB's case the images are not producing visitors, they are merely requests for graphics from her site.

[Mads Dam]

I experienced this some years ago; suddenly my stats went skyhigh, but... I soon noticed there was not a corresponding rise in visits nor pageviews. Finally I discovered someone had 'borrowed' an image, without asking. I got quite mad, and changed the image to display with capital letters: 'Stop stealing my bandwidth!!!', or something to the same effect. Well, it worked, so it's at least a possible solution...

But I'm not sure if it's the best solution. At least, since the initial incident I have moderated my reaction. If someone borrows an image, I don't really mind IF it is for personal and noncommercial use. In any case, it's always polite to ask first (and impolite not to)...

[obietemp]

I would replace the pic with one that advertises my site....FREE Advertising!!!