People hotlinking videos from my server with Secure_link mod installed

[jdinh0608]

I noticed a site that has been hotlinking my videos, even though my server has secure_link module installed that generate expiry time stamp and MD5 hash. I also notice that site hotlinks videos from Sapo, even though they also use a cache system. How are they doing this ? and how do i stop them ?

[TreeTops]

Are you familiar with 'htaccess'? Use that to stop hotlinking.

[jdinh0608]

I don't have htaccess as I use Nginx to serve the videos. I did do a HTTP valid referrer anti-hotlink with Nginx. However, that method is not very efficient as most of the popular browsers used today such as Firefox or IE don't often send a referrer header, and especially more shaky when it comes to flash. So far, I only managed to get the hotlink-protection to work on chrome and maybe safari, but not on firefox or IE.

[TreeTops]

htaccess is server side software (it's not located on your computer) so it works with any browser. If your server is a unix server then it is installed by default. If windows server then it can be added by your host.

I once had a guy in Germany that was hotlinking to one of my videos and stealing my bandwidth. I just changed the link to go to a photo that said "This Video Was Stolen" and made another link for the original video. That seemed to work as that guy was too lazy to hunt out the new link. Now I just post my vids on Vimeo and anyone can watch them without using my bandwidth.

But using htaccess is much better as it stops the hotlinking cold. There are tutorials on the web on how to stop hotlinking with htaccess.

[Baldrick]

TreeTops: The nginx web server doesn't use htaccess(apache web server).

Maybe you should try find a nginx forum.

[TreeTops]

OK Baldrick, I see nginx web servers don't use htaccess. Maybe their forum will have the answer. They should have a secure way to stop hotlinking that works for jdinh0608.

[Bjs]

Nginx http header referal

More in depth knowledge on setups

[El Heggunte]

More in depth knowledge on setups

Thanks for the URL. And oh BTW, one of the big problems in nginx is exactly the half-assed documentation, which BTW is not available in the downloaded bundle Indeed, forcing the user to look for basic help on the Web is a braindead idea.