It always makes me feel bad when I see this in my refers:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /common/rss-blue.gif 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /common/theft.gif 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /images/lara39.jpg 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /common/theft.gif 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /images/lara50.jpg 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /common/theft.gif 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /images/lara35.jpg 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /common/theft.gif 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /images/lara20.jpg 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /common/theft.gif 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /images/lara18.jpg 168.122.12.85 0pct. http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/6148578.htm -> /common/theft.gif 168.122.12.85 0pct.
What this means is that a person was trying to load my main page, and instead of the pictures of Lara Croft showing up, they got several copies of this:
That happens because their browser is giving my server the wrong refer. I've got it set up to only let pictures from this server be loaded if they're being loaded from my own pages, and the way I tell that is by the referer that the browser sends. This is what it's supposed to look like when it works properly:
http://denbeste.nu/ -> /images/lara35.jpg 216.78.48.198 0pct. http://denbeste.nu/ -> /cd_format/MadeWithCityDesk.gif 195.92.168.176 0pct. http://denbeste.nu/ -> /cd_format/bottoml.png 216.78.48.198 0pct. http://denbeste.nu/ -> /images/lara39.jpg 195.92.168.176 0pct. http://denbeste.nu/ -> /images/lara50.jpg 195.92.168.176 0pct. http://denbeste.nu/ -> /images/lara35.jpg 195.92.168.176 0pct. http://denbeste.nu/ -> /images/lara18.jpg 195.92.168.176 0pct. http://denbeste.nu/ -> /images/lara20.jpg 195.92.168.176 0pct.
That special graphic is only 2K, while the picture files can be huge. And here's why I did it:
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 24.237.214.6 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 24.237.214.6 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 24.237.214.6 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 24.237.214.6 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 212.120.152.189 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 212.120.152.189 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 207.206.223.35 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 207.206.223.35 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 212.120.152.189 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 212.120.152.189 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 24.73.193.82 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 24.73.193.82 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 81.106.183.46 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 81.106.183.46 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 24.54.219.110 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 24.54.219.110 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 24.119.1.141 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 24.119.1.141 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 151.201.150.243 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 151.201.150.243 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /images/flmthrow.gif 67.8.195.94 0pct. http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=548030 -> /common/theft.gif 67.8.195.94 0pct.
That particular picture (flmthrow.gif) is a 4-frame animated GIF file I created, and it's 193K. Someone on Fark thought it was cool, but instead of linking to the page on my site where I used it, he linked directly to the image file and embedded it in the Fark discussion thread. That meant that every time anyone loaded that particular Fark thread, they tried to use about 2 seconds worth of my upstream bandwidth.
Fark gets about as many page loads in a day as I get in a month, and if my server had been sending the actual GIF file instead of my 2K replacement, it would have maxed out my upstream bandwidth for several hours while that particular thread was hot, and no one would have been able to actually load my own web page that day. (There were several thousand attempts to load that file via Fark.) I don't spend $200 per month on my internet connection in order to anonymously and involuntarily serve pictures to Fark readers, or readers of other similar discussion fora.
This happens to me a lot more often than you might realize. People try to link to pictures on my server all the time, and I got fed up with it a couple of months ago and set it up to send the small image instead when that happened. But once in a while when someone is honestly visiting my site, their browser sends the wrong refer and then they get the bandwidth-theft image instead of the pictures they should see.
I'm afraid there's no solution to this. The problem isn't on my end; it's actually a browser bug. (It should be sending my web page as the referer, rather than the one you were at just before clicking a saved shortcut to come visit me.)
However, I am pretty sure that if you do see my bandwidth-theft image, you can hit the "reload" button on your browser and then the real pictures will come up correctly.
