Image theft from my zen cart site

Hi Everone

I know this isnt zencart specific, although my ecommerce sites use zencart, Today ive been doing some back link checking to my website and found lots of links from sites i didnt recognise on investigation i realised that these sites have stolen images from my website, infact im hosting the images for them, i was going to delet the images or change the names but i thought to myself are these one way links from a relevant sites may actually be beneficial to me in the terms of seo, any thoughts would be appreciated

Thanks

Mate2009

Usually a server administration tool allows to turn on some kind of "Hotlink protection". You could check that one out. :)

Hi val

thanks, i was going to do that but wasnt sure if it would effect my zencart operating

You could add a watermark to your images. This will protect future theft and if you put a watermark with your url, the images you are hosting will be advertising on their sites. Image Handler 2 allows you to do this universally with all your images or use a photo editing software to add the watermark and replace the images on your server.
Free advertising plus the link!:clap:

You may need to include your own secure as approved for the Hot Link Protection but you will notice that when you turn this on and start navigating your site on the secure pages ...

Image Handler2 contribution will do the watermarking.

Photoshop can help you copyright your images via Digimark. Digimark will allow you to track your copyrighted images. Images open with the copyright symbol.

Dynamic Drive com can help you write a htaccess file that will prevent hotlinking and snooping into certain folders.

I use my logo image as a background image in a div within the logo section. My logo gif is then right clicked as a clear image named something meant to embarrass the fool. Just don't name it clear.:laugh:

#1- /includes/templates/your_template/css/stylesheet.css.

#logoWrapper
{
margin: 0em;
padding: 0px 0px 2px 0px;
height: 75px;
background-color: #003;
background-image: url(../css/header_back.gif);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
}

#logo
{
text-align: center;
height: 75px;
padding-bottom: 1px;
padding-top: 4px;
background-image: url(../css/logo.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: center center;
}

#2- /includes/languages/language/your_template/header.php

define('HEADER_LOGO_IMAGE', 'getalife.gif');

No matter what you will do, they will get the image if they really want to steal it.

I'd turn on hot link protection. They're stealing your bandwidth which is something you pay for.

there is an alternative which always makes me laugh.

1. if people are linking to an image for product x - log in and re upload this image - with an alternate name.
   e.g I have a customer which used some motorcycle logos we had photographed and then played with in Photoshop. an ebay user in .au was hotlinking these to enhance sales of his cd/pdf manuals.
2. edit the original image (in our case suzuki-logo.jpg) in this case the image was edited to resemble a pink phalus with the words "I steal other peoples images" then re-upload the image via ftp
3. Enjoy the results on the offenders site

Yes I know its childish & does not stop the bandwidth theft which in our case was noticable due to this guys being fairly popular. The end result was the guy had to edit his template and all of his old listings seem to still have our picture on them. (I also emailed all the other websites he was stealing images from and notified them)

We also have clients and some forums hotlinking to our products (shock absorbers) these have a posative effect of free advertising for us so I didnt want to turn on the hotlinking protection to break these links - so its swings and roundabouts (we do watermark all our product images - this image was a category image)

Kev

bedfordcomputers:

there is an alternative which always makes me laugh.

1. if people are linking to an image for product x - log in and re upload this image - with an alternate name.
   e.g I have a customer which used some motorcycle logos we had photographed and then played with in Photoshop. an ebay user in .au was hotlinking these to enhance sales of his cd/pdf manuals.
2. edit the original image (in our case suzuki-logo.jpg) in this case the image was edited to resemble a pink phalus with the words "I steal other peoples images" then re-upload the image via ftp
3. Enjoy the results on the offenders site

Yes I know its childish & does not stop the bandwidth theft which in our case was noticable due to this guys being fairly popular. The end result was the guy had to edit his template and all of his old listings seem to still have our picture on them. (I also emailed all the other websites he was stealing images from and notified them)

We also have clients and some forums hotlinking to our products (shock absorbers) these have a posative effect of free advertising for us so I didnt want to turn on the hotlinking protection to break these links - so its swings and roundabouts (we do watermark all our product images - this image was a category image)

Kev

I can think of many amusing things to water mark the images with, if that happened to me. ..hummmm.. i wonder if you could get sued for adding very offensive messages or dammaging to the stealing sites sales.

The only problem I could see happening is if the changed images were adult or contained profanity etc, that might break your host's TOS.

Steven300:

The only problem I could see happening is if the changed images were adult or contained profanity etc, that might break your host's TOS.

Its great when you have your own servers :clap:

To be fair my first instinct was goatse (NSFW if you dont know what this is) - But then I may spend far to much time on b3ta.com.

If any image I host/create on MY server is then stolen by a 3rd party using MY bandwidth - is it my fault that the results of that theft are detrimental to the 3rd party?
Cant see any court in the UK convicting of me it. To be fair cant see anyone being dumb enough to try and prosecute me for it.