Do you block hotlinking of images?

[Samwise89]

Do you guys block hotlinkers? The big complaint for this is stealing bandwidth, but once you have a site trafficked enough its probably a drop in the bucket of your total bandwidth. You probably lose a few legit backlinks but I doubt it stops the majority of reuploading your image and using you as a source if they're going to.

But what about image scraping sites with the fake imgur themes and those? Do you think it would stop them or once they have you in their database do they keep linking even if its to a broken URL for them?

 

[ryandiscord]

I use cloudflare's hotlink protection. Yes, image scrapers will still link to the image url. It looks like a broken image on their page.