Linking To Your Website

**DaffiDuck** · July 3, 2005

This guy has not asked my permission to use my website for HIS information and he profits from it.

How can I stop him? I have already asked politely and he has told me to ***** off

and told me I can delete my website as he never removes links.

Is there a way to block him?

**bellringr** · July 3, 2005

As far as I know it's not illegal for someone to link to your site as long as they aren't stealing your bandwidth. But you can always change the name/extension of the page he's linking to so his won't work. Or rename your page and make the original page say something about him and what he said to you so the people from his site who see it will know what a jerk he is.

**TweezerMan** · July 3, 2005

I'm not really clear on what is actually happening, and what you would like to do about it.

You can't prevent anyone from merely linking to your site.

This guy has not asked my permission to use my website for HIS information and he profits from it.

I'm not sure what this means. Is this person doing something in addition to linking to your site?

**TweezerMan** · July 3, 2005

But you can always change the name/extension of the page he's linking to so his won't work. Or rename your page and make the original page say something about him and what he said to you so the people from his site who see it will know what a jerk he is.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Rather than renaming files on my own site and break my own permalinks, I'd probably set up something with mod_rewrite that would be triggered when the referer is from the other site.

**DaffiDuck** · July 3, 2005

I'm not really clear on what is actually happening, and what you would like to do about it.

You can't prevent anyone from merely linking to your site.

I'm not sure what this means. Is this person doing something in addition to linking to your site?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Without going into a lot of explanation, this guy was banned from several sites and now has started his own program. No problem however,

He is using my site to give people on his website information on how to set up. He asks for money.

I have tried blocking the site but the site does not resolve to an IP

**DaffiDuck** · July 3, 2005

bellringr I have already thought of that, but feel it the last resort.

I don;t need people to be burdened with MY problems if I can resolve them.

I need to find a way to convert the website he is on to a numeric value so I can block it with my CPanel.

Anyone know how or where to find such a conversion program

**DaffiDuck** · July 3, 2005

Rather than renaming files on my own site and break my own permalinks, I'd probably set up something with mod_rewrite that would be triggered when the referer is from the other site.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

UH........scratching head......thats over my head....

How do you do that

**TweezerMan** · July 3, 2005

Add the following to the .htaccess file in your public_html directory:

>RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} bad-domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* alt-file.html

If a visitor comes to your site by clicking a link on the 'bad-domain.com' site (so the domain name appears somewhere in the referer string), then the visitor will be redirected to alt-file.html (in your public_html directory), no matter what page the link was trying to go to.

Replace 'bad-domain.com' with the actual domain name, create an alternate page to display and upload it to your public_html directory, and whatever name you use for the alternate page, replace 'alt-file.html' with the name of that page.

**DaffiDuck** · July 3, 2005

Add the following to the .htaccess file in your public_html directory:
>RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} bad-domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* alt-file.html
If a visitor comes to your site by clicking a link on the 'bad-domain.com' site (so the domain name appears somewhere in the referer string), then the visitor will be redirected to alt-file.html (in your public_html directory), no matter what page the link was trying to go to.

Replace 'bad-domain.com' with the actual domain name, create an alternate page to display and upload it to your public_html directory, and whatever name you use for the alternate page, replace 'alt-file.html' with the name of that page.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OK I will try this later today and let you know my success..

Sorry about delay, Ihad to man the BBQ (Tri-Tip)

I do appreciate the response and help.....

**bellringr** · July 3, 2005

David, I knew there must be a snazzier way to go about it

**TCH-Rob** · July 3, 2005

If you wanted to get nasty about it you could have your alt-file.html be a page that warns others about his site as well. If he isn't going to be nice to you then you have the option to not be nice back.

**DaffiDuck** · July 3, 2005

If you wanted to get nasty about it you could have your alt-file.html be a page that warns others about his site as well. If he isn't going to be nice to you then you have the option to not be nice back.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That would be my first knee jerk reaction to do, however I have learned that that doesnt stop the really determined jerks who want to mess with you. Its almost a challenge to them.

I will try my hand at this and let you all know.....many thanks

**Deverill** · July 4, 2005

Your information is given away freely so you'd not have any recourse legally... but...

I'd make sure that my site's name and the fact that it is free to everyone and the web site address was plastered on every page... they pay him, find your info, and don't pay him again. Sounds fair to me

David's technique is a good one that you can use to link to a page that says "Here I am, I'm free and you've been ripped off" (however tactfully you wish to say it.)

Don't forget that by optimizing your site for the search engines you may be able to "steal" some of the folks that would have gone to his site. If someone enters "Help for XYZ Widgets" then get them to your site first and he'll reap what he has sown.

**DaffiDuck** · July 4, 2005

Add the following to the .htaccess file in your public_html directory:

Hmmm there is no .htaaccess file

How do i generate one or make one

**TCH-Don** · July 4, 2005

You can use your cpanel file manager

goto the public_html folder (click on the folder icon)

select create file

on the right type in .htaccess

then select the file by clicking on the name

on the right select edit

paste the text inside and use the save button at the bottom.

You may find in file manager that you can see an .htaccess file there already

if so the just edit the file.

**DaffiDuck** · July 4, 2005

Its not working.....

Can I talk to one of you TCH people off the forum?

because I dont really want to give out the URL of the guy causing me trouble and direct traffic his way just cause people want to see what I am talking about.

I did everything exactly as stated but its not forbidding access.....

**DaffiDuck** · July 4, 2005

OK let me revise that.....

Its now blocking it but NOT using the .html script I told it to use.....

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@XXXXX and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.xxxxx Port 80

I suppose thats better than nothing LOL\

**DaffiDuck** · July 4, 2005

well thats BIG NO

its blocking even me when i try to go from my own webpages.......

HELP

**TCH-Rob** · July 4, 2005

You can PM me and also include what you put in your htaccess file.

**DaffiDuck** · July 4, 2005

TCH-David, Rob and I tried for a hour or so last nite and couldnt get it to work.

This is what I have in my /home/XXXXXXX/public_html/.htaccess FILE

I think half the issue is that the site I am trying to block is www.XXXX.de its in Germany and he is framing my site

Yes I am also stopping Hot Linking

#The next line modified by DenyIP

order allow,deny

#The next line modified by DenyIP

#deny from all

allow from all

</Limit>

order deny,allow

deny from all

</Limit>

AuthName www.XXXXXXX.org

AuthUserFile /home/XXXXXXX/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd

AuthGroupFile /home/XXXXXXX/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://XXXXXX.org/.*$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://XXXXXX.org$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.XXXXXX.org/.*$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.XXXXXX.org$ [NC]

RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ - [F,NC]

order allow,deny

allow from all

</Files>

Any ideas?

**DaffiDuck** · July 4, 2005

Oh yeah, I big thank you to TCH-Rob for trying to help me so late at night

It was very much appreciated.

**Deverill** · July 4, 2005

I'm no htaccess guru but I did notice that in the original, David had

>RewriteRule .* alt-file.html

and you have

>RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ - [F,NC]

It seems quite a bit different to my novice eyes.

**TweezerMan** · July 4, 2005

They are different, because they're doing two different things. :shocking:

The code I suggested was for redirecting pages requested from links that were clicked on another site. It looks at the referer - if the referer is a link from the "bad-domain", the server will serve the alternate page instead.

The code that was already in the .htaccess file is to prevent hotlinking. It looks at the referer, and if it is not blank or a link from 'your' domain, *and* it is a request for an image file (file has an extension of jpg, jpeg, gif, png, or bmp), it returns a "403 Forbidden" error message.

(Now I have an idea about what might be wrong with the code I suggested...off to do some more testing...)

**DaffiDuck** · July 4, 2005

Oddly enough the code Rob wrote last night seems to be NOW working

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (XXX\.de) [NC,OR]

RewriteRule .* Forbidden.html

XXX = the IP i am banning

I was looking on some other sites trying to find out what would work and retried what Rob came up with last night

**TCH-Rob** · July 4, 2005

It is working for me now as well. Interesting that it did not work before.

**DaffiDuck** · July 4, 2005

It is working for me now as well. Interesting that it did not work before.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Would DNS propagation be the issue?

**TCH-Rob** · July 4, 2005

That should not have anything to do with it.

**TCH-Rob** · July 4, 2005

By the way, for those that were wondering what the big deal was with this, the offending website was framing Daffis' website making it look as though it was part of his own site. In the address bar it still had the other persons site as the URL. We all welcome inbound links but not when it is done in such a way as to make the visitor believe it is the referring sites page.

**DaffiDuck** · July 5, 2005

OK back to square one......

It blocks everyone trying to access via MY webpages not just this guy's website......

**TCH-Rob** · July 5, 2005

It did not do that for me earlier. I see you have removed it. I will wait for an answer from someone else as I am at a loss now.

**TCH-Rick** · July 5, 2005

I would suggest worrying about one thing at a time. Save the .htaccess file and create a new one with just the code that has been suggested to prevent the remote domain from accessing your site and not include the Hotlink protection. The code that CPanel adds to prevent hotlinking can mess up other things. Once you have one thing working you can try coding in the Hotlink protection manually.

**DaffiDuck** · July 5, 2005

It didnt do that for me earlier either

But then I started getting PM's from users on my website and were telling me they were denied access.....and getting the "forbidden.html" message LOL

oops

So I went to my webpages and any page I clicked on I got denied

**TweezerMan** · July 5, 2005

By the way, for those that were wondering what the big deal was with this, the offending website was framing Daffis' website making it look as though it was part of his own site. In the address bar it still had the other persons site as the URL. We all welcome inbound links but not when it is done in such a way as to make the visitor believe it is the referring sites page.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Linking to a web site and framing another person's web site are different things. I doubt that using mod_rewrite to check the referer string would be of much help when you're trying to stop someone from framing your site.

I've looked at the site where the framing is occuring. I don't believe that it is done with malicious intent. There are two domains can be used to reach the other web site. One domain uses a frameset to redirect browsers from one domain to the other while keeping the original domain's URL in the address bar. The second domain, which is the target of the first domain's redirect, does not enclose the page in a frame at all. I don't think using frames to redirect browsers from one domain to another is the best way to do it, but it's not my site. :shocking:

Still, whether there's malicious intent or not, browsers who try to reach the site through the domain that does use frames will have other links from other sites framed, and this is something that most people don't like and do object to.

If you don't want your site framed by this site (or any other site), the best thing to do is add a little javascript to your web page that will break your page out of any frames that it may find itself in. Here is an example of one such javascript, which would go between the <head> and </head> tags in your web pages:

><script type="text/javascript">
 <!--
   if (self != top) {top.location.href = self.location.href;}
 //-->
</script>

If you'd rather redirect the user to a specific page, like you were trying to do by having mod_rewrite check the referer, the script could be modified like this:

><script type="text/javascript">
 <!--
   if (top.location.href.indexOf('bad-domain.de') > -1) 
     { top.location.href = 'http://your-TCH-domain.com/Forbidden.html'; }
 //-->
</script>

If your page is loaded in a frame from the 'bad-domain.de' web site, then the script will break out of the frame and load your 'Forbidden.html' page in the user's browser.

You still may want to block referer links from the other site, which mod_rewrite should easily be able to do. I don't know why you get 500 errors, but you've never posted the full .htaccess code you're using when you received them, so it's difficult for someone else to figure out where the problem is.

Hope this helps...

**DaffiDuck** · July 7, 2005

OK Ii finally figured out the work around for this with the URL rewriting to the .htaccess file and so I am posting for others who might need to do the same

I have two functions going on:

1st set . Blocking a certain German website (.de) from linking to me

2nd set . Preventing Hotlinking of any pictures

You have to manually ADD the hotlinking code AFTER, because if you try it from the cPanelX, it actually REMOVES the previous lines for blocking.

Also i removed ALL the lines that were there before and had a clean slate

The reason there are 3 lines for a domain is because he uses a variation and i want to get all of those he uses.

THIS EXACTLY WHAT IS ON THE .htaccess file

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://xxxxx.de/.*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://www.xxxxx.de/.*$ [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://www.xxxxx.de/.*$ [NC]

RewriteRule .* - [F]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://xxxxx.org/.*$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://xxxxx.org$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xxxxx.org/.*$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xxxxx.org$ [NC]

RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ - [F,NC]

**TCH-Rob** · July 7, 2005

Thanks for the post. Nice to see you got it working.

**DaffiDuck** · July 7, 2005

I actually have had several others already ask me HOW i stopped this guy as they have been trying to also. They are so ticked at him also.

It took MANY rewrites to figure it out but got it......works for mac's also as one guy has already tried it

**DaffiDuck** · July 9, 2005

Here is an update which I find rather hilarious.....

The German guy who has been linking to my website and I finally got blocked has emailed me 2 threatening letters.

I have many links on my opening page and ONE links to a different website called Hall of Shame where this guy is now posted and he is also threatening me for "linking" to it gee how ironic.

He is in Germany which leads me to believe there is little one can do for threats

**guita01** · July 21, 2005

Add the following to the .htaccess file in your public_html directory:
>RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} bad-domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* alt-file.html
If a visitor comes to your site by clicking a link on the 'bad-domain.com' site (so the domain name appears somewhere in the referer string), then the visitor will be redirected to alt-file.html (in your public_html directory), no matter what page the link was trying to go to.

Replace 'bad-domain.com' with the actual domain name, create an alternate page to display and upload it to your public_html directory, and whatever name you use for the alternate page, replace 'alt-file.html' with the name of that page.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I know someone who used this technique and redirected the people to a I AM A SPAMMER site.

**guita01** · July 21, 2005

Here is an update which I find rather hilarious.....

The German guy who has been linking to my website and I finally got blocked has emailed me 2 threatening letters.

I have many links on my opening page and ONE links to a different website called Hall of Shame where this guy is now posted and he is also threatening me for "linking" to it gee how ironic.

He is in Germany which leads me to believe there is little one can do for threats

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Cool!!!!

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