Prevent hotlinking and direct requests

**delighted** · 05-26-2007, 08:15 PM

Not sure if this is the right forum, but is it possible to enable a image to be viewed only if it's linked from within my domain, and not if it's linked from someone else's (hotlinked) or directly requested?

Thanks!

**FuZion** · 05-26-2007, 09:15 PM

Check out this website: http://altlab.com/htaccess_tutorial.html

Hope this helps!

**delighted** · 05-26-2007, 09:56 PM

Thank you, this was informational. It describes how to stop hotlinking, but there still is a problem with people doing direct requests to the image. This is where I guess PHP could be useful.

**prtt75** · 05-28-2007, 01:02 AM

Hi!

Why not disable the right click function or encrypt the site to prevent them from seeing the image link?

**mtishetsky** · 05-28-2007, 05:03 AM

prtt75, disabled right click is the most idiotic protection I've ever seen.
delighted, add some letters to your .htaccess to prevent sending images if the referer is not yours or empty:

Code:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !(^www\.)?mydomain.com
RewriteRule ^images/(.*)\.jpg http://www.mydomain.com/images/hotlinked.jpg [L]

At my site urls are constructed in such a way that I can reproduce the name of the corresponding page from the name of requsted file and if the referer is empty or not mine then redirect the request to the page instead of the file. For example try to download this file: http://www.onsmartphone.com/themes/s...heme-10261.zip. You will get redirected to http://www.onsmartphone.com/download...dy-theme-10261. Next, if you click the link from that page you will download the ZIP file quite fine.

**delighted** · 05-28-2007, 07:49 PM

Thanks a lot! This is just what I'm looking for.