Hi,

This is a follow up on http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=327699

Have beem searching google for ages and reading tons of threads/posts, but no results.

How do I add hotlink protection to a entire server at once? I have 500 accounts and what to prevent them from beeing used for hotlinking.

I realy hope someone can help me with this :)

Originally posted by kgp43
Hi,

This is a follow up on http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=327699

Have beem searching google for ages and reading tons of threads/posts, but no results.

How do I add hotlink protection to a entire server at once? I have 500 accounts and what to prevent them from beeing used for hotlinking.

I realy hope someone can help me with this :)

Using filematch you can set global settings: http://apache-server.com/tutorials/ATimage-theft.html

They are posting this example, but then you have to add every single account too:

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://my\.apache\.org/" local_ref=1
<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpg)">
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from env=local_ref
</FilesMatch>

Is there a way to do it by serverip?

Wasn't sure if you are aware or not, but personal firewalls now come with ad protection. When hotlink protection is enabled, anyone viewing the site with a firewall won't be able to view the site graphics. The firewall settings can't distinguish if the graphic is really an ad containing spyware or not, so the firewall just disables the visitor from viewing the graphic. This only happens when hotlink protection is enabled on an account.

I know it's a catch 22, but I just wanted you to know.

Artemis

Why would the firewall think the graphic is an ad? The link to the graphic doesn't change with hotlinking protection.

Because, the firewall thinks the graphics are ads containing spyware. Norton and ZoneAlarm both have an ad protection feature. Not sure about any of the other commercial Firewalls as those two are the only ones I ever hear complaints about with this issue. I constantly see emails in the graphic related yahoo groups I am in where people complain that some of their visitors can't see the graphics on their sites. I (or someone else that knows about this) will tell them to ask their visitor to turn off the ad protection in their firewall.... the visitor can then see the graphics. One thing that is always a common factor is the site owner has hotlink protection enabled.

Artemis

I think you are wrong here.

Hotlink protection has nothing to do with spyware or ad (size). Dont you mean images where the sites/menu use JS? Are you just guessing or do you have facts?

I don't know why it happens, but it does. It doesnt happen when hotlink protection is disabled. When asked to turn off the ad protection and reboot the browser, the images reappear. Or, when the site owner turns off hotlink protection (and the ad protection in the firewall is still on), the images reappear.

I wish I knew why. I can only tell you what I myself have experienced and what others in the yahoo groups I am in have experienced. This is such a common problem in the graphics community I am in, I thought everyone was aware of it. :(

Artemis

Originally posted by kgp43
I think you are wrong here.

Hotlink protection has nothing to do with spyware or ad (size). Dont you mean images where the sites/menu use JS? Are you just guessing or do you have facts?

Sorry, did not completely answer your questions. No, the images are just regular hand drawn graphics (teddy bears, little dolls layout graphics etcetera). Just regular gif or jpg files.

We stumbled upon how and why this was happening several months ago when someone posted a url to a news article about it. I've posted in one of the groups hoping someone still has the link to the article so I can show it to you.

In the mean time, I found this very thing mentioned on the official Cpanel forum...
http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?p=49062&highlight=firewall+protection+images#post49062

And also here..
http://www.easywebsitepromotion.com/website-promotion/norton-firewall-fix-to-see-pictures.htm
(Notice the last complete sentence.)

There are your facts. :D

Artemis

Still looking for a solution, so if anyone know how to do this then it would be a great help :)