[vox] Content Sharing becomes Bandwidth Theft

[Jeff Newmiller]

On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, Mark K. Kim wrote:

> Steps:
> 

[... various sequences leading to ...]

>    4. Your bandwidth is still stolen.
> 
> Okay, so maybe that's not a good idea.  Let's try just blocking bad
> referers altogether:
> 
>    1. They see an image on your website they like.
>    2. They link to it as their avatar.
>    2a. They test the avatar.  They see the cached image.  They think
>       it works!  It's a keeper.
>    3. Someone tries to see their avatar, but see a broken image
>       because your server rejects bad referers.
>    4a. Your bandwidth is safe[r]!
> 
> If you just wanna play some pranks on the bandwidth stealers, go ahead
> with the "do not steal my bandwidth" image, but to really protect your
> bandwidth it'd be better to just reject bad referers altogether.

Not so much a prank as a message... intended for a relatively short
duration.

Learning how to restrict referrers with .htaccess took some time, but it
is done now.  Thanks to all of you for prodding me to do it right.  I will
leave the yellow sticky note ("Put your avatar on your own website") in
place for a few weeks, and then kill it.

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