Image Hot-Linking

[RFH Reseller: Space Cowboy]

Is there any sort of script or something available to stop people from hotlinking to images?
I have seen it before on sites when you try and display an image from another site into a page, you dont get the inteded image, instead a customised image saying that hotlinking isnt allowed.

[RFH Reseller: Sol]

This is done by checking the referrer for each image request.

In a dedicated server environment it is possible to map the image mime types to a server-side filter, however in a shared hosting environment you would need to ensure your images are not easily found.

I would recommend doing this by creating a server-side script that checks the referrer and if it is your site then it reads in and writes out the image to the browser. The exact image to serve should be identified either using URLRewriting or by checking a querystring parameter.

[Staff: Warren Ashcroft]

This is done by checking the referrer for each image request.

You need to remember that not all browsers pass the referrer with the request - something to bare in mind.

[RFH Reseller: Sol]

You need to remember that not all browsers pass the referrer with the request - something to bare in mind.

Very good point, as I had this problem recently with a form to email script that I had running on the RFH servers.

The alternative method is to use Session objects to authorize the user to download the images. You would basically set a session variable when the user visits any of the actual pages and just check that session variable when the user requests an image.