Stolen Bandwidth yet again...

[MTDesigns]

Any comments on this thread? It's regarding my bandwidth used by others posting on a little bbs...

(Purposely not linked from here) - skotrat.com/skotrat/webboard/messages/4967.html

Do these messages deserve a response? What is your opinion?

In 2 days I have renamed 4 images...if it continues I will be contacting the webhosting co.

Best always,

Joi~

[Tibbits]

Looking at a friends web logs I found an image of his being used as part of a multi-screen sig on a forum, I told him and he put an advert for his site in place of the old image:P

[sheila]

Originally posted by MTDesigns:

Do these messages deserve a response? What is your opinion?

First of all, I would never take such an issue public, especially not in a forum on a site such as this one.

This just provides a "show" for all the site's regular visitors. You certainly aren't going to get any of them to back down and agree they were wrong and to do "what's right" while they are performing in the show.

I guess you have to decide how much grief and bandwidth they are causing you. If you ignore it, will the problem go away on its own. Maybe they will become disinterested. Or not. I don't know.

If you think it is going to be a problem, send a private e-mail to the websites administrator, as a serious warning. Then wait. And if no satisfaction comes, contact their hosting company or upstream provider.

[MTDesigns]

Thanx...I should have looked to see what the site was before I posted anything in the first place (I've never publicly posted my complaint before...don't know what possessed me to do it this time)...

I guess I'll just wait and see what happens. Maybe they'll get disinterested soon - this certainly can't be the highpoint of their days...or can it ;)?

[MTDesigns]

Was just wondering...someone who posted on that board mentioned that there was a way to stop others from linking to images on your server. I have yet to find the answer to this problem. Is he right, or is this person ill-informed?

[PaulKroll]

Well, there's this http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1739&highlight=referer+bandwidth+stolen

And this, but read carefully, as mod_rewrite is just slightly tricky. :) http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1824&highlight=bandwidth+theft


And this http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2266&highlight=bandwidth+theft which refers (HA! I kill me!) to this article http://apachetoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-06-14-002-01-PS

HtH

[MTDesigns]

Very helpful information, but I'm not sure how to add the code to my .htaccess file -- I would want to be able to link images from 5 domains. Also, how would I block a referrer in my log files?

TIA!

Joi~
So many questions...

[MTDesigns]

Well, I finally made time to look at my raw log files...I understand it, but how do I use this to locate bandwidth theft?

[Tibbits]

There have been a few threads here in the past about preventing bandwidth theft, by denying access to image by referrers other than your own site. (using apache directives and mod_rewrite etc)

You need to check you logs for referrals to images from other sites, images linked or displayed on your pages will have your site as referrer.

[Tibbits]

Oops, repeated a few people there.. VBull decided I'd read some posts that I hadn't.

[MTDesigns]

You need to check you logs for referrals to images from other sites, images linked or displayed on your pages will have your site as referrer.

What would I find in my logs that I wouldn't find by viewing the referrers in my stats?

[sheila]

Originally posted by MTDesigns:
Well, I finally made time to look at my raw log files...I understand it, but how do I use this to locate bandwidth theft?
One thing that might be relatively simple, is to use a spreadsheet. (I did this recently with one of my raw log files.)

Since the log files are saved in a very column-like format, it's fairly easy to import just the columns you are interested in into MS Excel (and, I would assume, most any spreadsheet).

The format of the log files is:
IPaddress | - | authname | timestamp | request | statuscode | bytestransfered | referrer | useragent

That's nine columns. I'm not sure at the moment what goes in the second one. Anyhow, it's always just been a dash in mine, so it isn't something that comes up very often. The authname is often just a hyphen, too. You will get a userID there if someone has to log in via .htaccess in order to access the requested files.

request is something like:
"GET /subdirectory/filename.html"

The protocol is either GET, POST or HEAD. Usually it is GET. This will show you which page or file on your site was requested.

Status codes: you can look up here:
http://www.aota.net/Server_Performance/responsecodes.php3

referrer is sometimes blank, but this is what will tell you where they linked in from.

So, the columns you will be interested in are the request and the referrer columns. You could just import those two columns into your spreadsheet.

Look for all the requests for image files. Get those ones. Find out if they are being referred from a site that is not one of your own domains.

HTH,

[sheila]

Originally posted by MTDesigns:

What would I find in my logs that I wouldn't find by viewing the referrers in my stats?
Much more detail. You can correlate exactly the IP address, requested file, referrer, user Agent.

Instead of seeing that there were 200 links from a particular referrer, you can see exactly which files the referrer linked to, and so on.

[Tibbits]

What would I find in my logs that I wouldn't find by viewing the referrers in my stats?

I don't know.. you asked first!

Well, I finally made time to look at my raw log files...I understand it, but how do I use this to locate bandwidth theft?

[Tibbits]

Sheila, I'd love a stats programme that could deliver all I want from them.. but I've never one:(
It'd be nice to be able to, when finding a 404, instantly access all the information from that browser session. Log analysis programmes mostly just summarize, or spit the information you want onto diffferent pages with no way to connect it all together. And I dislike viewing raw log filesm because I usually do this through telnet, where the lines are too long so you either have to scroll back and forward a lot or wrap the lines and make a huge mess of everything:(

A nice, possibly database driven, stats programme would be marvelous.

[sheila]

Originally posted by Tibbits:
Sheila, I'd love a stats programme that could deliver all I want from them.. but I've never one:(

Yeah, I agree with the idea of a stat package that could deliver all you want from it. As far as having never found one, I personally haven't looked. I just use the FQ default stats or browse my raw logs. (My site doesn't get that much traffic, so that's not such an ominous task.)

It'd be nice to be able to, when finding a 404, instantly access all the information from that browser session. Log analysis programmes mostly just summarize, or spit the information you want onto diffferent pages with no way to connect it all together.
Yes, I've been thinking this myself lately. I've looked at a few different web pages for web stats products (either to use on my home machine, or install on my FQ web space), but so far, none of them have inspired me enough to make me think it was worth bothering to try them.

And I dislike viewing raw log filesm because I usually do this through telnet, where the lines are too long so you either have to scroll back and forward a lot or wrap the lines and make a huge mess of everything:(

A nice, possibly database driven, stats programme would be marvelous.
Well, either my connection is much faster than yours, my log files much smaller, or both. It doesn't take me long to download one days worth of files, so I frequently browse my raw logs.

I think that a database driven stats program is the answer. I don't know of one. After I finish all the other projects I'm working on and have lined up for the immediate future, maybe I'll write one of those two. ;)

[MTDesigns]

Thanx everyone...I guess I have some work to do :)!

[ryount]

I never thought we would be the target of bandwidth theft, but I was looking through stats and found someone using one of our pictures as a background for a homepage. It was only 2.5MB this month so I didn't think it warranted a complicated solution so I just renamed the picture.

[Maverick]

This is a problem I run into a lot since I have a lot of images and sound files. They're constantly being used on forums or as background images and sounds on other sites. Mod_rewrite took care of much of it, but it still lets a lot through since you need to let traffic through if the referrer isn't known. Otherwise you wind up blocking out your own users and that's not a good idea. I came up with a pretty simple PHP solution to dynamically rename folders and links so that any hotlinks don't survive for long. It's cronned to run every day (or twice a day or every hour if you like) so that anyone trying to steal files can't be successful. It saves the trouble of checking logs to determine what's being stolen and renaming files by hand. Once set-up it's totally hands-off. If anyone wants it, leave me a message and I'll send you the files to take a look at how it works.