Hotlinking Tester

Hotlinking is directly linking to a website's files (whether images, music, sounds, Flash movies, etc.). Hotlinking is usually done on images inside an <IMG> tag. An example would be linking to an image from a server you don't own, such as http://www.server-i-dont-own.com/logo.gif. By hotlinking, you use up the server's bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer that a website uses. Every file loaded from a website uses some sort of bandwidth. Bandwidth does not come cheap, and you must pay for it. It's more of "stealing".

Unless you have permission to hotlink, you shouldn't hotlink files. They are also many consequences from hotlinking. The website owner could move or change the image you're trying to hotlink. If they figure out that you're stealing their bandwidth, and if they were evil enough, they could make you look like a fool by replacing the image you were trying to use. It can also have more drastic consequences, such as getting sued by the website owner for violating the DMCA (which by the way, is a very evil thing).

If you are a hotlinker, you can prevent yourself from getting into trouble by copying the file you want to use to your own web host or image host (there's a list of them on this website; visit Free Image Hosts on the left side). But please note, you must have permission to use the image or it must be in the public domain because you may violate copyrights.

If you are a website owner, there are ways to protect yourself. If you need a tester to check if your images are safe from hotlinking, use the following tool below. If you don't have protection, and if you would like some, continue reading.

Note: The image may still work after you use the tester, because your browser may cache the image. One easy way to fix this instead of clearing your browser's cache is to put a query string with random numbers (i.e. "?2452" [without the quotes]) to the end of your image URL below. It will force your browser to try to reload the image. This trick should work on most servers.

If you don't have hotlinking protection, you can easily fix that if your website runs the Apache server. This tutorial doesn't have instructions for other servers. You may want to search the web for instructions for your specific web server.

Tune in next time for the next part of this article - how to enable hotlinking protection on your server.

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