Use These Tips to Reduce the Theft of Site Images

When someone hot-links to one of your images, they are displaying it on their website but consuming your bandwidth to serve the image. It's both image theft and bandwidth theft. The good news is that you get a backlink out it. You may find sites hot-linking to your images when you are checking your backlink profile.

The easiest thing to do is to rename the image folder and change it on your website. This way, image thieves will have a 404 error show on their website. This is an easy fix if only a few images are hot-linked.

To thwart people from hot-linking to your images, add this code to your .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPREFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{HTTPREFERER} !^http://(www.)?yourwebsite.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteRule .(gif|jpg)$ http://www.yourwebsite.com/hotlink.gif [R,L]

Place your website URL where it says yourwebsite.com. Change hotlink.gif to the image you want to display when someone hot-links to one of your images. You can use image stolen from www.yourwebsite.com or an image that will embarrass the person hot-linking to your image, such as the FBI Copyright Infringement Notice. There are multiple versions of this code where you can allow certain sites access.

If you have a WordPress website, there is a plugin called Prevent Content Theft which prevents right-clicking. This will prevent lazy people from hot-linking to your image, but there are ways around it for someone who really wants one of your images.

Another option is to email the offending webmaster or use a file a DMCA Takedown Notice. Most website owners quickly comply to a DMCA notice.

Website owners can also link to your videos and documents so it is important to protect your assets. If someone will hot-link to your assets, the backlink won't be worth it as they are probably running a low-quality website. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/c3az5v/howcanistoppeoplehotlinkingtomyimages/.