![The Lost Cave [formerly Lost In The Shadows]](http://www.lostcave.net/Banner.png)
What’s the big deal about hotlinking? Well, it costs me money. When you have a dot.com and pay for your hosting package, you have to pay for bandwidth. To quote altlab.com’s page about hotlinking and bandwidth theft:
Bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred from a website to a user's computer. When you view a webpage, you are using that site's data transfer to display the files. Since web hosts charge based on the amount of data transferred, bandwidth is an issue. If a site is over it's monthly bandwidth, it's billed for the extra data or taken offline.
Some time last year a girl “borrowed” my server space, she used pictures from my site to decorate hers – while they were still on my server. I emailed her politely to ask her to take them down, but first I had a little fun. I changed the names of the pictures she was hotlinking, and uploaded new ones with the names, they looked something like this:
You see, while the pictures are on my server, I have control over them. Not complete control, otherwise morons like her would not be able to hotlink my images. What I do have is a file that automatically changes any picture that someone is trying to hotlink from the picture they want to the image above. So if you don’t want to look like a moron, I suggest you don’t hotlink me.
However, if you are stupid enough to try, then expect to see your entire site covered in images like the one above, and I will happily report you to your web host.
Her site is since gone, but Deuce of Clubs has a very amusing section dedicated to humiliating anyone who dares steal bandwidth from there. The webmaster is an inspiration to us all.
Hotlink me and I will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Got that?