Re: [cobalt-users] Attack on my server

["Carrie Bartkowiak" <ravencarrie@xxxxxxxx>]

Leslie,
The javascript code to display the word 'nudity' is a fantastic idea. Use
it!  (Also a great way to hide your email addy from spam-bots, btw.)

I went to the site and you have some awesome pics. Really talented
photographers, and beautiful women. I would be willing to bet you money (if
I had any) that there are a *ton* of guys out there linking straight to your
pictures. Pulling them right off of your server to display on their page...
especially the ones where the breasticles are showing.  *L*
Check your logs and you should be able to tell if this is happening.

If it is (and even if it isn't, this is a good practice), here's what you
do.
1. Rename the pics that are being pulled. In their place, put up a HUGE
graphic advertising your site with the pic's original name. Now whenever
someone loads a picture-thief's page, they'll see an advertisement for your
site!

2. Put the gallery of women in a password-protected directory (or a bunch of
them).  Then display the username and password to get into the gallery right
on the page. Say something like "In order to keep our pictures from being
stolen by direct linking, we've had to password protect them. Use this
username and password to access our FREE gallery!"
This is how people who sell and give away graphic sets keep people from
pulling stuff off of their servers and drive up the bandwidth. The first two
to come to mind are Suburban Designs (www.subdesigns.com) and Moyra's Web
Jewels (www.moyra.com [go into the 'jewel mine']) - take a look and see how
it works out at those two sites. Users have no problem getting in to see the
pics, but the bandwidth is protected.

Believe it or not, I had this problem once. I put up some pics of myself
when I was pregnant, to show my online friends and far-off family. My usage
went through the roof after a week. Logs showed that the pics were getting
pulled through direct linkage. The sites that these pics ended up on - well,
let's just say they weren't children friendly.  Those sites soon had huge
640x480 bright red graphics saying "This webmaster chooses to STEAL pictures
from sites where women have innocently displayed their pictures for family
and friends. These women have NOT given permission for their likenesses to
be displayed on this site. This is copyright THEFT, yadda yadda yadda."
Then I went through the source codes of the sites and emailed the webmasters
of all the other sites where the pics were being stolen to alert them to it.
One was a bonafide pregnant fetish porn site, and let's just say the
webmaster was *not* happy. He asked me for a list of all the sites that had
stolen my pic and I swear to you, in 24hrs all of those sites (6 of them!)
were replaced with redirects to his site and blatant notices saying "This
site has been hacked because of picture theft, you're being redirected to a
REAL pregnant porn site."  He emailed me the next day saying "I may put up
pictures of pregnant women for men to look at, but all of my models pose
gladly. Nothing pisses me off more than leeches like that who prey off of
innocent women just trying to share their pics with their family. You let me
know if you get any more trouble from these guys."
It was too cool.  :)  I'd love to know who his hacker was!

Anyhow.
You might also want to change the IP of the site if you can, because many
newsgroup spammers send out notices without the actual site name, but just
the IP stuck in a link with a bunch of cgi code. They redirect it through a
cgi-hit program with tons of paying pop-up windows on their own site, then
redirect to your IP (so that the people clicking on the links can't just see
what the site is and go there without going through the cgi gateway).

Best of luck!
And thanks for advertising women who don't all look like barbie dolls.  :)
They look terrific!

Carrie Bartkowiak