Miscellaneous Hacks - Anti-Leech Attachments - prevent hotlinking and bandwidth theft!

Title : Anti-Leech Attachments

Version : 1.1

Coder : Jason Williams

Purpose : Prevent your forum attachments from being directly linked to - prevent bandwidth abuse.

Why : Bandwidth can be expensive, plus I was frustrated with one of my members linking to three video clips on my forum from his own site, effectively abusing the bandwidth I pay for, so I set about a system that stops hotlinking, but at the same time, as a courtesy, providing a dynamic link to the post containing the attachment.

How : This could be replicated very easily using .htaccess but the one thing that it can't do is give you the link to the attachment itself. This mod displays a message informing the user that hotlinking is not allowed, then giving them the link to the post to view the attachment directly.

Known Issues : The security can be defeated by using the drop down style menu on the Anti Leech page - this has only been confirmed as an issue on Firefox. I have unsucessfully tried to find a way of removing the drop down on that page only.

Confirmed working with vBSEO 3.2.0.

Important : This has been tested on 3.6.2 and 3.8, I can presume it will be compatible with 3.7.x because it works on 3.8 - as always BACKUP FIRST!

Demo : http://www.steadiforum.com/attachmen...9&d=1180779148

Installation :

1. Import Product - product-antileech.xml
2. Save bandwidth!

File uploads : 0
Files to Import : 1
New Templates : 1
New Phrases : 2
Uses Hooks : 1
Uses Queries : 1

History :
v1.0 - Original release

v1.1 - Added enable/disable option, tested on VB 3.8

Done - if you like please click install! (and click Nominate for MOTM!)

[dinodonk]

Originally Posted by hornstar1337

Can I also request a couple extra features ^^

1. captcha - To ensure a use does not make a bot to download the image over and over to waste my bandwidth on the site, this will make each user who goes to download the image, to verify they are human first (kinda similar to rapidshare ^^ )

2. A count down time, which can be set from the admincp per usergroup, eg. this usergroup can be 10 seconds, this usergroup can be 60 seconds, this usergroup can be no count down timer etc. (kind of similar to rapidshare ^^ )

These 2 extra features integrated into this modification would defantly get my vote for mod of the month!

i second that.. please add these features

[TheInsaneManiac]

Making people register to download attachments is a good way to benefit from hotlinking. You gain registration, hits, advertisement clicks, and sometimes good members.

Also the way to prevent the style from displaying on the attachments page is simple. Either use hooks to edit it out via a plugin or just perform a template edit and use a conditional to not display it on the attachments page.

[horussjr]

update for 4.0?

[Cerbero1000]

Finally works after 2 hours!

[kalisekj]

i tried this as well and its not working sites still able to leech and for the life of me I cannot find the admincp setting for this plugin

[Snookieboy]

Anyone had any luck converting this to be used on VB4? Cant go without this plugin

[Brandon Sheley]

this is sharp, I'll check this out sometime
/me clicks install

[harisafp]

Thanks ... not show in admincp > option
*Uninstalled*

[g0rdy]

Is there any way to do the opposite?

I've searched high and low for a way to get urls from:

forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=3846&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1 295480296

to:
forums/attachment/3/8/4/6/image_name.jpg

Like I said, I have tried searching maybe I'm not using the best keywords but this thread/mod was the closest I get.

[InsaneNutter]

It would defiantly be fantastic if this could be upgraded to work with VB4.

Does anything like this exist for VB4?