Monday, July 25, 2011

Curses - Foiled Again!

Curses - foiled again!! 

Hopefully that's what some photo thieves in Brazil are thinking today.  A while back I posted this, about how some kind of freaky communications I received on Flickr by them begging me to let them use some of my photos on their Orkut pages caused me to make my Flickr pages private (I haven't gone back since, although I'm still maintaining my Pro account until I feel comfortable enough to go back and open it all up again).  After I privatized my Flickr account, I began to get some similar comments on my blog.  Of course they had been smart enough to copy my blog address from my Flickr profile before I pulled it...  I know it's not a Ds thing, because from what I can gather from the bogus profile pages of the people who contacted me on Flickr, they just gather pictures of cute little girls.  I suppose I could be flattered, but, uh, thanks but no thanks...

I keep my Feedjit live blog visit feed open on my desktop at work all day so I can see who's coming and going, and I make a quick check of my analytics every morning, just to see what was up with the previous day.  Over the last 8 or 9 months, however, I have seen large numbers of visits from Brazil by way of Orkut.  It dropped off for a while, then in the last week or so I've seen a massive increase in those visits.  And on those visits, I could see that they were clicking on each. and. every. photo. in my blog, systematically.  Likely copying them. 

To say I felt helpless as I watched them is an understatement.  I had no idea what to do to stop them in their tracks as I watched Feedjit continually flaunt their activities.  Finally, on Friday, I couldn't take it any more.  I pulled my blog and made it private.  Just temporarily, until I could figure out what to do.  I remembered that someone had recently sent me instructions on how to change the code in each photo, individually, to make it non-copyable.  Daunting, to say the least, as I couldn't venture to guess how many photos I actually had on my blog.  Not to mention, the thought of actually deleting code scared the pants off of me, but once I got into the swing of things, there was no stopping me!  I managed to make my blog public again on Friday evening, and had finished fixing all of my photos by Saturday morning.  Granted, they've probably already stolen just about all of them already (they had left off at October 2010 when I stopped them on Friday), but I think there are several different entities doing the same thing, from the same source, so I've at least put a stop to any future activity.  No clue what they're doing with the pics.

On Saturday afternoon and again on Sunday, I got several hits from Brazil (different locations, different IP addresses) but instead of sticking around and clicking on photos, they tried a couple of different pages and gave up.

And damn, that felt good!!!

In the meantime, I invite them to go ahead and try to steal one of these...  (insert sound of blowing raspberries)

12 comments:

Kathy said...

neener neener neener. (I hope they translate THAT into Portuguese.)

Anna said...

okay that is making my stomach churn. Really. Maybe people like me shouldnt be posting photos at all. I am so proud of you! Three cheers for Mommy!!

my family said...

ewww creepy to say the least. I willh ave to watch out.Ihave tosay Sammis pictsare just too beautiful. Do you ever get a bad pict of her? she's so photogenic:)

ANyway maybe I need to find out how to make my photos unaccessible if it wasnt too hard to do.Love your previous post so glad you two were able to meet up, its always nice to see an old friend

Becca said...

Ha! Yes, there are plenty of BAD pics of Sammi! I should do a post one day of all the most uncomplimentary ones. LOL

By the way, if any of you would like to have the document showing how to modify the code, please send me an e-mail to bateminx@yahoo.com and I'll send it right out to you!

Thank you to Patti for sending it to me in the first place... :-)

Becca said...

Oh, and one other thing you will need to protect your photos...google "right-click disable in blogger" to get code to add to your blog that will make it so people can't right-click and "save picture as" on your blog.

Meriah said...

..and Becca the BateWoman belted the (Brazilian) bastards!
You rock!

Pallavi said...

Did you notice on Stats page, blogspot shows you which keyword search landed the visitors here.

On my blog, I have seen words like 'cute little asses'.. It scares me. I have seen some porn sites as the origin for certain hits. No clue, how to stop it.

Meanwhile I have also disabled the right click function. But I think there are more ways to copy pictures even when function is disabled. And I also made my profile private.

Anna Theurer said...

Uh oh. . .I had a whole bunch from there a few months back, but I use photobucket and blogger. Willing be shooting you an email

Rob Monroe said...

So obnoxious and pointless. Ugh.

Melissa said...

The way I was protecting photos quit working, but I did get the right click disable installed.

Crazy Beautiful Love said...

Okay, I want to know how to do that!
Seriously Becca, send me the info.
How do I keep learning so much from you, you smart mama you..
-erin

Laura said...

I have had one or two hits on a blog from a site that made me wonder. All pics on my my blog are of my daughter fully clothed & many of them don't even show her face because I worry about this sort of thing. What could they be doing with these pictures? Does anyone know if, for single random feedjit hits from those sites, if it could possibly just mean that they clicked on that type of site then clicked on a blog next, not that that site sent them to your blog?

Hope this makes sense

thanks

Laura
http://downsyndromeupupupandaway.blogspot.com/