WTF! Ezboard!

[ULTIMATESSJ]

I think my forums could be working into a lil bit of trouble with some Ezboard, recently within a few days, pub109.ezboard.com just magicly got into my Referring Sites in my vBStats, and seemed to be growing by the second, and as far as i know, i know of no ezboards that have anything to do or use anything of my forums, so perhaps this Ezboard could be using one of our attachments or something like that. Any suggestions on how this could be happening

[N9ne]

Well, there is the hotlinking of attachments, avatars, or maybe they linked to a post on your forum?

[ULTIMATESSJ]

but it's odd that magically, over 3000 hits can come from an ezboard within the space of 2-3 days, when my forums arn't exactly super popular

[Craigr]

This happened to me. People were hotlinking to my avatars, etc.

Therefore i put in a htaccess file to stop this happening.

If possible check your site stats. Maybe you will get a direct link to where your material is being used and then put an end to it.

Craig

[Chris M]

@Craig - Do you think you could post how to prevent hotlinking?

Satan

[Erwin]

Same thing happened to me when an ezboard hotlinked my logos and graphics.

[Xenon]

Options FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://strategy-forum.de/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.strategy-forum.de/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://strategy-network.de/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.strategy-network.de/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.jpg$ - [G]

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://strategy-forum.de/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.strategy-forum.de/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://strategy-network.de/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.strategy-network.de/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.gif$ - [G]

that's my .htaccess file, just allowing hotlinking for two sites

[N9ne]

It's always ezboards hotlinking, isn't it!

[Chris M]

@Xenon - Thanks - Does that require "mod_rewrite"?

If so, i use Ensim

Satan

[Craigr]

The thing i did too was replace the image they wanted with one i created. On the image i put 'stop stealing my bandwidth'.

Here's a few URL's that help:
http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive...dththeft.shtml
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...andwidth&meta=
http://www.htmlite.com/HTA013.php
http://www.hostingmanual.net/other/htfun.shtml

Craig