Blocking bandwidth brigands

22 Jun 2007

I've started blocking image referrals as the traffic generated from some image thieves has grown from "slightly miffed" to "pissed off" levels. I first tried a referrer white list but with web-based feed readers popping up on an almost weekly basis, I've gone with a black list of the worst offenders instead.

In Apache, this is a relatively painless process of adding something like the following to .htaccess:

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^.*thievingbastard.com/" blocked
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^.*anotherthievingbastard.net/" blocked

<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpg|png)">
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=blocked
</FilesMatch>

For all those sites linking to my emoji images, I don't mind sending you the whole list if you drop me an email.

10 bonus points to anyone who can reveal the story behind the misspelt "referer" in the HTTP specs.