Getting raped by hotlinking! Plz advise.

[StNick]

I am trying to prevent hotlinking of certain filetypes from my site... Bandwidth theft is really killing me lately, so I need to try and curb it somehow.

I've done so with an .htaccess file as follows:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+.)?mysite.co.za/ [NC]
RewriteRule .*.(zip|pdf|exe|rar|pps|avi|wmv|mpg)$ bad.gif [L]

This works just fine if you try and load the file in your browser, but this method is easily beaten by simply putting the URL into a download manager.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[PsyWulf]

http://www.crosswinds-cadre.net/?page=hotlinking

 

[StNick]

While I appreciate your answer, it's pretty obvious that you didn't read my question thoroughly.

I have used the exact same methods in the link you supplied. They are still defeatable by using a download manager.

 

[PsyWulf]

While I appreciate your answer, it's pretty obvious that you didn't read my question thoroughly.

I have used the exact same methods in the link you supplied. They are still defeatable by using a download manager.

I did,but

My logic says that using the blank referrer rules should be actively enforced as per the linked site and not necessarily yours.

As such my assumption is that the referring site is being either duped or - the server is not properly handling the htaccess permissions
Option 1 would be hard to stop unless cookies were being used which is certainly an option,or 2 - nfi

But I can see how you'd think I decided not to read what you had posted

 

[StNick]

Cool, thanks for the input... I'll fiddle around some more and report back if I come to a conclusion.