Fun With Avatars?

[IAIHMB]

I really have no idea how to explain this, so you will get an example. :P

I play a couple of online games, and people take avatars they have made pretty seriously. Today, I noticed that someone had try to use someone elses avatar, but there was a trick. When the leecher tried to look at the avatar, it showed up just fine, but when anyone else looked at it it was something like "I'm an avatar leecher, I suck." Any idea how this is done? Thanks guys.

[888888]

I really have no idea how to explain this, so you will get an example. :P

I play a couple of online games, and people take avatars they have made pretty seriously. Today, I noticed that someone had try to use someone elses avatar, but there was a trick. When the leecher tried to look at the avatar, it showed up just fine, but when anyone else looked at it it was something like "I'm an avatar leecher, I suck." Any idea how this is done? Thanks guys.

Maybe, the picture is a link to another picture and when you right click and save it, you are saving the linked picture. Pretty dumb guess but it is the best I could think of.

[808smokey]

I really have no idea how to explain this, so you will get an example. :P

I play a couple of online games, and people take avatars they have made pretty seriously. Today, I noticed that someone had try to use someone elses avatar, but there was a trick. When the leecher tried to look at the avatar, it showed up just fine, but when anyone else looked at it it was something like "I'm an avatar leecher, I suck." Any idea how this is done? Thanks guys.

What game?

[IAIHMB]

Midnite Challenge and TopShift. I don't think the link idea would work, for your avatar you have to give a url with a .jpg .bmp .gif or .png extension.

[thecoalman]

I'd bet that the game site probably does it. The owner probably complained and they have the site generate code to pull up the stolen image code. Or if the the thief used the same url that url may be registered to the original owner and it's replaced with the stolen image code .

It might be done through .htaccess from the owners side which is a file that resides on the server that contains commands. You can prevent people from hot-linking images off your server. It won't prevent them from stealing them and putting them on there server but they won't be able to use your server as the source. You can direct the server to serve no image or a replacement image such as a ad for your site . I would think that would get a complicated though if possible at all since you want the image to be viewable for some.

[IAIHMB]

I was talking to the guy who did it a while ago. What he does it makes it so the avatar shows up fine for the leacher, but for the rest of us the leecher banner shows up. One of these days. :P

[thecoalman]

Well he's probably doing it through htaccess, the leecher used the owners url as the source . The web page that pulls the image off the owners server probably provides enough info so that the owner can distinguish who is requesting the image.