Content theft is a big issue these days. Some people not only have no issues stealing other people’s articles, they lift their images without giving credit back. Hotlinking is specially nasty. It is the practice of using someone else’s image on a site and stealing bandwidth in the process. Thankfully, there are ways you can stop people from stealing your content and bandwidth. If you know your way around .htaccess, you should have no problem handling this. But these 3 hotlink plugins for WordPress can do the job as well:
Configurable Hotlink Protection: blocks links to videos, images, audio files from a third party server. You do have the option to white-list certain sites.
Hotlink2Watermark: this is a sneaky plugin that shows a watermark within each stolen image. You can use each stolen image as an ad for your site.
Hotlink Protection: a simple script that keeps others from stealing your images. It relies on your .htaccess file to keep third party servers from linking to your images.
You do not have to use a plugin to prevent hotlinking on your site. .htaccess tools such as this one handle the job for you:
Hotlinking is a terrible practice. But not everyone who does it understands why this practice is wrong. Thanks to the above plugins, you can prevent people from stealing your images and teach them a lesson in the process .