DO NOT STEAL MY BANDWIDTH (alternative title - if you want a screenshot of the green EV SSL bar, make one yourself)

 

The above image has been branded because some sites took it upon themselves to link directly to the image on my Web site rather than create their own graphics, commonly known as inline linking or bandwidth stealing. Why? Because www.ie-vista.com wears the cost of the bandwidth consumed by visitors downloading and displaying the graphic not only at www.ie-vista.com but any other site that chooses to link directly to the image.

Sorry, but I'm not willing to stand for that.

If you wish to create your own screenshot of the green addressbar triggered by an EV SSL Certificate, please go to:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=0742AE7E-6E7F-47D3-8327-E20D94AF2794&displaylang=en

and download and install your own testing certificate.  Then you can go to http://www.woodgrovebank.com, get your own screenshots and pay for your own bandwidth.

If anybody discovers sites that are Web sites linking to images on www.ie-vista.com, http://www.inetexplorer.mvps.org or http://www.msmvps.com/spywaresucks, please let me know, because I do not allow anybody to link to any images on any of my sites without my express written permission.

Here is another image I have edited, bandwidth stolen by the same site - I can see I am going to have to go over the entire site to try and work out just how many images they have linked to, and just how much bandwidth they are stealing.

Take note bandwidth thieves. This may happen to you, but next time my comment may be more...strident.

Published Thu, Nov 9 2006 8:16 by sandi
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Comments

# re: DO NOT STEAL MY BANDWIDTH (alternative title - if you want a screenshot of the green EV SSL bar, make one yourself)

Thursday, November 09, 2006 1:27 AM by Cd-MaN
Hello. An easy way for catching hotlinkers (people who directly link to your images) would be to look at the logs of referrer urls for the images. Normally you should only see your site or a blank value (if the user one of his "security / privacy product" blocks the sending of the referrer. What's real nice about this method is the fact that the offending site can do nothing to hide it. The only drawback of it is that you need to look at the server logs (this being a problem because you are essentially sharing a host with other sites and you would have to convince the server admin) which may or may not contain the given information (I have no experience with IIS - being an Apache guy - so it is possible that by default or in the current configuration the server is running is not logging this information - because usually it's not important). It is also fairly trivial (depending on the level of access you have to the server) to put together a script which only serves the given image if the referrer is your site or it's blank. However there are a few gotchas if you plan on implementing such a thing and want to avoid using a lot more bandwidth. If you have further questions, do not hesitate to contact me. Best regards, Cd-MaN

# bandwidth theft

Saturday, August 11, 2007 6:28 AM by Spyware Sucks

I've made my feelings very plain regarding the widespread habit of hotlinking, or inline linking