[lug] Website links

[D. Stimits]

Kyle Moore wrote:
> 
> A spam is evidently going around that includes an image from one of our
> company websites. The spam is html and uses one image link to our site and
> one from another. They didn't even pull it to their own site....wanted to
> use our bandwidth instead.
> 
> Is there any way of stopping this? I changed the name of the image so it
> doesn't show up in the spam anymore but that doesn't stop people from
> emailing me (now mail admin/postmaster too) saying we are sending them
> spam. This site is currently all static pages. I suppose in the future I
> could store my images in a password protected directory (or database) and
> only allow connections from localhost or something...have to think about
> it.

If the link points directly at your site, and does not use a referrer
(common), you could at least compress the file so that it won't display
directly. That would be inconvenient. A really good way would be to use
cgi, such that there is NO direct access to the file except via cgi, and
such that cgi arguments never point at it except if referred to via your
own site (a bit complicated compared to static web pages, but turning of
browsing and serving via cgi adds a lot of control over static). E.G.,
you could write a cookie when the user visits your page that is intended
to view the image; and cgi could send the link only if the cookie is
present. Make the cookie short-lived.

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com

> 
> ---
> Kyle Moore
> 
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