Ok - here's the deal...
My wife did a google search, for my website to see what pages/links show up - here, one of the jpeg files I have, named "girl3" for a gallery I have for children portraits (I'm a photographer) - is appearing on a smut site called "sexworms" that has a bunch of links for "girl3" ranging from me to TOTAL SMUT.
NUMBER ONE - Now my wife thinks I'm checking out those kinds of sites - I DO NOT...
TWO - my name & site is appearing on this smut site. I am not, have not, and never will I be associated with this site.
THREE - I wonder how many other innocent photogs, people, businesses have links on other sites they don't want...
I did a whois search and sent the webmaster an email to remove the link, whether or not it ever be taken off. But has anyone else had the same thing happen for your own site? Or should I just remove/change names of files?
I know that this is probably a MAJOR downfall of having a website on the internet - but is there any way to prevent this in the future????
Thanks in advance!Best thing to do is to give your images really weird file names, like alpha-numerical strings which do not have any recognizable words in them. Next, create a robots.txt file that directs search engines to exclude your images folder from indexing. That way, there's no way that a search engine can index the photos by name, or by following links to them.
KDLAAre the photos being used by the offender physically on another site ('on their site, not your site'), -or are they 'hot linked' from their site, off of yours? First off, we talking legality issues here since you mention what appears to be porn/smut/lewd. I assume that your images are not, but could be interpreted that way due to inclusion, if part & parcel to a larger site catering to this venue. -You might want to talk to someone more qualified to investigate this matter. Proving that the images are yours and that they are not 'smut', and were 'stolen' for this purpose, etc.
But if the site(s) are 'hotlinking' to your images, -stealing your bandwidth that is, -you can set up a *htaccess snippette that will block 'hotlinking'. This won't stop them from 'right-click & save' though. But this would be the first step towards protecting your rights, if not your property ('copyright images' are your property).
I recently read an article about how to prevent 'hotlinking', -I think the URL was: <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thesitewizard.com">www.thesitewizard.com</a><!-- w -->
(edit: )
-Had to dig alittle deeper... here is the URL:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/bandwidththeft.shtml.htaccess">http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/ba ... l.htaccess</a><!-- m --> will help you a little typically there are tonnes of these harvesters then will steal content or links for there own rankings. I have never had pictures used in this way but my pages have been just because they targeted some words and page rank.To all three of you - Thank you very much for the info! It gives me something to search and get educated. I did come across some info re: htaccess - I'm only familar with html through goLive & prior web page programs and definitely, I'm no programmer by any means!
I've attached a screen shot of the page (i smudged my info)- you decide for yourselves if I have reason to be somewhat ticked for this!! It is using a link to one of my photos, but it doesn't display the photo - just the file name.jpg - but has my name, web address & email on the description line! Look a couple lines down and there's the link for "brooklyn's best"... not good in my eyes. Period.
It just irritates me that by some "spider" or whatever it is that searches tags/(is it-meta tags?/info) can come across a file that has the phrase "girl.." can be just randomly associated with other links. Especially without my permisson! I will maybe have a chat w/my lawyer - she's pretty cool when it comes to only 1-2 questions...
I signed up mainly for this reason, but there's always SOMETHNG you can learn about with computers/programming/etc... thank you again for the help so far!Next, create a robots.txt file that directs search engines to exclude your images folder from indexing.That is totally up to the indexer. I wouldn't expect sleezeballs like that to give a hoot what's in your robots file.It just irritates me that by some "spider" or whatever it is that searches tags/(is it-meta tags?/info) can come across a file that has the phrase "girl.." can be just randomly associated with other links.The indexers create an index of all words that are not part of a tag.Ray, does that include comments inside the <!-- --> ?yes, text inside of comment tags can/does get indexed.That's pretty ugly. I've run into churches that have as a policy that images of children don't appear on the web site and now I see why.
I'm thinking that this "service" doesn't search the web itself and that it uses Google or something legit. So the first thing that I would do is change the URL for each image. Perhaps redirect the old URLs to an image with a nice quote from the Bible or other sacred text. Find something apt and pointed. You can do the something for all hot-linked images. The users of this "service" might report the link as bad and get the reference to you removed.
For the future use the robots.txt file to ask search engines to ignore the new URLs.Would someone explain how "robots.txt" works and how will it help me preventing others from indexing my files?Would someone explain how "robots.txt" works and how will it help me preventing others from indexing my files?
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.htmlRay">http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.htmlRay</a><!-- m -->, does that include comments inside the <!-- --> ?As Russell said, yes the comments will normally be indexed as will the values in some meta tags. The tag names themselves will be filtered out.
My wife did a google search, for my website to see what pages/links show up - here, one of the jpeg files I have, named "girl3" for a gallery I have for children portraits (I'm a photographer) - is appearing on a smut site called "sexworms" that has a bunch of links for "girl3" ranging from me to TOTAL SMUT.
NUMBER ONE - Now my wife thinks I'm checking out those kinds of sites - I DO NOT...
TWO - my name & site is appearing on this smut site. I am not, have not, and never will I be associated with this site.
THREE - I wonder how many other innocent photogs, people, businesses have links on other sites they don't want...
I did a whois search and sent the webmaster an email to remove the link, whether or not it ever be taken off. But has anyone else had the same thing happen for your own site? Or should I just remove/change names of files?
I know that this is probably a MAJOR downfall of having a website on the internet - but is there any way to prevent this in the future????
Thanks in advance!Best thing to do is to give your images really weird file names, like alpha-numerical strings which do not have any recognizable words in them. Next, create a robots.txt file that directs search engines to exclude your images folder from indexing. That way, there's no way that a search engine can index the photos by name, or by following links to them.
KDLAAre the photos being used by the offender physically on another site ('on their site, not your site'), -or are they 'hot linked' from their site, off of yours? First off, we talking legality issues here since you mention what appears to be porn/smut/lewd. I assume that your images are not, but could be interpreted that way due to inclusion, if part & parcel to a larger site catering to this venue. -You might want to talk to someone more qualified to investigate this matter. Proving that the images are yours and that they are not 'smut', and were 'stolen' for this purpose, etc.
But if the site(s) are 'hotlinking' to your images, -stealing your bandwidth that is, -you can set up a *htaccess snippette that will block 'hotlinking'. This won't stop them from 'right-click & save' though. But this would be the first step towards protecting your rights, if not your property ('copyright images' are your property).
I recently read an article about how to prevent 'hotlinking', -I think the URL was: <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thesitewizard.com">www.thesitewizard.com</a><!-- w -->
(edit: )
-Had to dig alittle deeper... here is the URL:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/bandwidththeft.shtml.htaccess">http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/ba ... l.htaccess</a><!-- m --> will help you a little typically there are tonnes of these harvesters then will steal content or links for there own rankings. I have never had pictures used in this way but my pages have been just because they targeted some words and page rank.To all three of you - Thank you very much for the info! It gives me something to search and get educated. I did come across some info re: htaccess - I'm only familar with html through goLive & prior web page programs and definitely, I'm no programmer by any means!
I've attached a screen shot of the page (i smudged my info)- you decide for yourselves if I have reason to be somewhat ticked for this!! It is using a link to one of my photos, but it doesn't display the photo - just the file name.jpg - but has my name, web address & email on the description line! Look a couple lines down and there's the link for "brooklyn's best"... not good in my eyes. Period.
It just irritates me that by some "spider" or whatever it is that searches tags/(is it-meta tags?/info) can come across a file that has the phrase "girl.." can be just randomly associated with other links. Especially without my permisson! I will maybe have a chat w/my lawyer - she's pretty cool when it comes to only 1-2 questions...
I signed up mainly for this reason, but there's always SOMETHNG you can learn about with computers/programming/etc... thank you again for the help so far!Next, create a robots.txt file that directs search engines to exclude your images folder from indexing.That is totally up to the indexer. I wouldn't expect sleezeballs like that to give a hoot what's in your robots file.It just irritates me that by some "spider" or whatever it is that searches tags/(is it-meta tags?/info) can come across a file that has the phrase "girl.." can be just randomly associated with other links.The indexers create an index of all words that are not part of a tag.Ray, does that include comments inside the <!-- --> ?yes, text inside of comment tags can/does get indexed.That's pretty ugly. I've run into churches that have as a policy that images of children don't appear on the web site and now I see why.
I'm thinking that this "service" doesn't search the web itself and that it uses Google or something legit. So the first thing that I would do is change the URL for each image. Perhaps redirect the old URLs to an image with a nice quote from the Bible or other sacred text. Find something apt and pointed. You can do the something for all hot-linked images. The users of this "service" might report the link as bad and get the reference to you removed.
For the future use the robots.txt file to ask search engines to ignore the new URLs.Would someone explain how "robots.txt" works and how will it help me preventing others from indexing my files?Would someone explain how "robots.txt" works and how will it help me preventing others from indexing my files?
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.htmlRay">http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.htmlRay</a><!-- m -->, does that include comments inside the <!-- --> ?As Russell said, yes the comments will normally be indexed as will the values in some meta tags. The tag names themselves will be filtered out.