Apologies

[Jeanette]

I just found out that my avatar photo turned into an image of an advertisement on this site.   

Sorry - my fault. I was tweaking my website settings to prevent unauthorised hotlinking and forgot to allow access to my avatar photo. All fixed now. 

[kathyp]

oh no!!!  30 lashes 

pretty sure no harm done.......

[Jeanette]

I figured that I had better own up to my mistake - I don't want to be reported for breaking advertising rules!

[BlueBee]

It’s been a while since I did some ASP.NET….how do you detect unauthorized hot linking?  Do you just blanket reject any page requests out of sequence or something?  An abnormal number of hits? 

[BlueBee]

OK, I got my chuckle for the night.  I was checking out your site and I got blocked by the Spamhaus when I clicked on the hive temperature link  .  I don't think I'm a spammer, but some of my conservative friends here might disagree 

[Jeanette]

how do you detect unauthorized hot linking? 

I can't claim to be an expert on preventing hotlinking. I know just enough about it to blanket-ban everyone from linking to my images (except my own website). Oh yes, and the recent addition - how to allow anyone to link to my avatar.

The two ways I know about are to edit the .htaccess file (for Apache servers) or write some code (for Zeus servers). Either method checks what website requested the image and then either displays the real image or a pre-determined default image.

Apache htaccess http://www.htaccesstools.com/hotlink-protection/
Zeus http://www.register365.com/knowledge/scripting/rewrite_scripts/244-how_to_prevent_other_people_from_stealing_images.html

[Jeanette]

OK, I got my chuckle for the night.  I was checking out your site and I got blocked by the Spamhaus when I clicked on the hive temperature link  .  I don't think I'm a spammer, but some of my conservative friends here might disagree 

Ah BlueBee, Spamhaus must have liked you a little bit ... you got to see the hive temperature link! 

Isn't the internet fun? <wry grin> At least this isn't a hotlinking problem! I added a Spamhaus spam filter to my blog recently to cut down on the Gucci handbag comments. Either you are a prolific Gucci salesperson or the Spamhaus filter has proven a little bit too strict for my needs.

Thanks for letting me know. I'll take a look at it today.