Can I keep someone from using my images?

[bre]

I made an image and added it as a smilie to use in my signature. Is there someway I can keep people from seeing it and using it? Thanks.

[Lynne]

If people can't see it, then why have it as a signature? But no, if there is an image on a page in your browser, you can grab it. You may use htaccess on your site to prevent people from hotlinking to it and stealing your bandwidth though.

[Dismounted]

Oh, and don't bother with "right-click protection" either. It's a waste of time.

[Tim Skellett]

Originally Posted by bre

I made an image and added it as a smilie to use in my signature. Is there someway I can keep people from seeing it and using it? Thanks.

1) You can alter templates so that only members can see sigs; that way, guests will not see your sig images. Insert membergroup permissions conditions around where the sig is displayed in the postbit.

2) Use .htaccess to stop hotlinking.

3) As Dismounted said, do not bother with Disabling Right-Click javascripts. It only annoys those who have a legitimate reason to use right-click in navigation.

4) None, NONE of these methods, will work if someone knows the image is there and is determined to steal it. There is no way at all of stopping that, unless you make your whole board totally private, and control membership very carefully indeed.

But using methods 1 and 2 will stop most stealing dead in its tracks. Good luck!

[Marco van Herwaarden]

The only real solution is watermarking.