You’re tired of having your bandwidth stolen from stupid kids who don’t bother to read a simple rule? Here a code to prevent it.

Open up a text editor such as Note Pad and paste this code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?YOURDOMAIN.COM/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png)$ - [F]

Change YOURDOMAIN.COM to your domain, don’t write http:// it’s already written. Now save it as .htaccess (if you can’t save it like that on your computer, save it as a.htaccess). Using an FTP program upload it to your site and then change the name to only .htaceess.

Explanation: the first line begins the rewrite, the second allows direct link on your site, the third line allows empty referrals and the last is the one which prevents direct linking and displays a 403 Forbidden error code instead of an image. [NC] means ‘No Case’ so however your domain is typed (upper or lower case letters) it always works.

You’re done! If someone direct-links an image from your site, the image will be a red X on their site.