Fusker Re-Visited

[Preacher]

Ok, so I've had hotlink protection on for my images forever and I've never had an issue with fusker. Now I am seeing a ton of referrals in my stats from several fusker domains, so I'm guessing that they are hotlinking my movies (wmvs)?

So I was thinking I could block them completely as a referrer. So I guess my questions are will this work, and if it would is the below code what I should put in my .htaccess?

PHP Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} fuskerfind [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} fuskem [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} eonpal [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L] 


(btw I have searched the board and gone through the threads and I'm just making sure that this recommended solution is what I need as I'm no htaccess ninja)

[cd34]

if you see it in your stats, are they 200/304 successes? or 403s? There is an addon that they use for IE and can use for firefox that blocks referrers and sends an empty referrer, allowing them to still post their entries, but, surfers without those addons will surf galleries that have tons of 403 errors.

If it is in your stats, you can be somewhat sure that they aren't hitting .wmv files because Windows Media doesn't send a referrer.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (fusker|fukser|fuskem|eonpal) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

is a little kinder. You can add more url 'pieces' inside the () as long as you separate the phrase with a |. The above code matches if it finds fusker, fukser, fuskem or eonpal in the url.

[Cleo]

Trouble is if you allow no referral traffic, like bookmarks, then places like fusker will use this to hotlink by blocking the referral.

Also as Chris just mentioned wmv files don't send any referral which is why I never use them.

[Preacher]

Thank you both. I updated my htaccess with CD34' recommendation and I'll keep an eye on my stats and see what happens.