HotLink Protection Problem

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 7:15 pm Post subject: HotLink Protection Problem

I enabled HotLink Protection on my site through CPanel and added my main site and subdomains to the 'URLs to allow access' list.

I never noticed any problems myself, but I've had 3 emails from people (2 in the USA and 1 in the UK) saying that every single image on my site had been replaced with my anti-hotlink image.

Is there any way to fix this? I've disabled the HotLink Protection for now, but I've had a lot of problems in the past with people taking my images to put on their sites and using up my bandwidth, so I don't really want to have to go back to checking through my Raw Access Logs to find out who's doing it. Especially with the amount of visitors I get now.

Any help would be appreciated

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5684

Hmm, we'll have to investigate - I'll have a fiddle with it.

Andrew

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5684

Did you make sure you added both www.

and http://yourdomain

?

Andrew

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2005 3:57 am Post subject:

Yep, I added both www and http://domain.

I did the same for my subdomains aswell.

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5684

Right well I'm going to have to mock up a few situations on one of my personal sites and investigate this (with friends in the states as well). I'll get back to you with what I find!

Andrew

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2005 4:38 pm Post subject:

As I understand it the hotlink protection works by checking the referring URL that the browser passes to the server. Problems crop up when this referring field is blank, usually because of privacy settings in the browser or some other software like Norton Internet Security.

I have had one user report this problem with one of my sites and when I checked my logs it was clear that their browser was showing a blank referring URL to the server.

I got round the problem by ticking the "Allow direct requests" box on the hotlink protection settings page.

Hope that helps.

See ya
Scotty

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5684

Thanks for that Scotty, lets see if that was the issue!

Andrew

Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 4:40 pm Post subject:

Thanks for your help Andrew and Scotty! I've checked the 'allow direct requests' box, so hopefully that'll work. If anyone has the time, could you please check my site and see if my anti-hotlinking image is appearing now? I'd really appreciate it. I'll pester some of my friends to check aswell

Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 6:41 pm Post subject:

I would like to help, but none of my installed programs will let me be so paranoid as to block referring URLs

See ya
Scotty

Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2005 7:11 pm Post subject:

I have this problem with my old host. I don't have that checkbox ticked. Maybe I will when Andrew gets round to sorting out my account

Anyway, I found loads of people I know who have a standard connection with a modem or router had no problems. However, my brother who has his own Win 2K3/Exchange 2K3 server at home, which he connects through, via a router, has a problem. Disabling HLP fixes his problem. I just thought it was a bug or something like that?!

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 5684

Sorted

Andrew

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