So you’ve got your spankin’ new blog and you want to spruce it up with some cool artwork you found online. You copy the image’s URL and paste it into your code as your background image. It looks great. Your friends think you’re groovy because your blog is stylin. A few days later, you log in to find that your background image is not showing up, or worse yet, it’s been replaced by something offensive. To your dismay, you realize that strangers and friends have viewed your blog, god knows how many times. Embarrassed and puzzled about how this could have happened, you quickly get over it and start searching Google Images for a new background.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Hotlinking is a growing trend among many new bloggers. Hotlinking also known as leeching, is the placing of a linked object, often an image, from one site in a page belonging to a second site. When someone visits the second site, the image downloads from the first site’s server. This is known as bandwidth theft - the intentional usage of someone's bandwidth without that person's authorization.    more »