Yesterday, I caught kentuckysportsradio.com hot-linking to images on my blog. I noticed an insane amount of traffic on my server requesting a single image, over and over again from the same referrer. Classic case of hot-linking, and boy, does that irritate me. Really though, is it that tough to just save an image and host it on your own blog instead of linking to others?In a previous post I described how to address the hot-linking problem by using Apache to check the referrer on each request. My previous solution involved simply returning a transparent 1x1 pixel image in place of the actual image requested. Well, through this KentuckySportsRadio situation, I discovered that when your server is pounded on and the hot-linker doesn't notice that it's bothering you, they don't (err, won't) stop hot-linking. Unfortunately, returning a transparent image just dosen't get their attention well enough. So, I stepped it up a notch.
Instead of returning a transparent 1x1 pixel image, I decided to become really obvious and configured my server to return a massive, bright red, 2000x2000 pixel square. This huge red square is bound to capture someone's attention. And, wouldn't you know it, it worked! After tweaking my server to send back this really annoying and disruptive 2000x2000 pixel square, KentuckySportsRadio.com gave up and changed their ways. I win.
This is a great win for bloggers and system administrators everywhere. You can somewhat curb hot-linking, and at the same time, my big red 2000x2000px square is only about 40Kb in size so it won't eat up your bandwidth. Feel free to use my big red stop hot-linking square on your own site. It's bound to make a great addition to a hot-linkers blog, forum, or web-site!
I love the smell of HTTP in the morning.
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