Image Protection

[ardoo]

I wish to stop people right clicking my images in my store. Is there a way to have some sort of protection installed into oscommerce to remove this ability from my competitors. I have noticed my images appearing all over the web.

 

thanks ardoo

[rseigel]

There's nothing you can do if someone wants your images bad enough. Best to simply watermark them all. That won't stop anyone that knows how to use PhotoShop or the like but it may deter amateurs.

[vcache]

if it is just a matter of stopping right click/save image as...there are a few ways of doing this...none are quick and none are necesarily very pretty as far as coding goes...but I know from personal experience that at least one of the ways works...

 

make sure each image is in it's own td and make the actual image you want there the background...then create a 1x1 pixel transparent gif and place that in the td (setting width and height to match the actual image size exactly..otherwise you end up with either part of the image being chopped off or the image being repeated...)...

 

the effct of this is...you still have right click finctionality for those that like to use it for navigation and such...but right clicking on an image and choosing 'save image as...' only gets them the 1x1 pixel transparent gif and not the protected image

 

crude? pretty much...effective? definitely

 

...and you don't tick off people that use the right click context menu for navigation...

 

(edit)

 

of course...nothing at all short of simply not having the website will stop them from take a screenshot of your page and cropping out the images....

[vcache]

For those reading this topic and would like to see an example of this in action...I have set up an example page at:

 

example

 

The coding of the page is entirely HTML so you can look at the source for exactly how to do it.

 

and in keeping with the spirit of open source...everyone has express, written permission to use the 1x1 transparent gif on their own site (as well as customer sites etc)

[♥Vger]

People right-clicking and saving your images to their own computer, or even their own website is not the major problem faced by webmasters - it's people 'hotlinking' your images to pages in their website. This is called bandwidth theft, because they are reducing their bandwidth by filling their pages with images taken each time the page is loaded from your website. The way around this is with a properly constructed .htaccess file dropped into all image directories. You'll find some help here

http://www.htmlbasix.com/disablehotlinking.shtml

 

and here

 

http://altlab.com/hotlinkchecker.php

 

Vger

[AlanR]

of course...nothing at all short of simply not having the website will stop them from take a screenshot of your page and cropping out the images....

Or looking at the source and loading the real image.

[Pompeylad]

Another way to get the images is to go in to your temp internet files folder and grab them from there.

 

Pompeylad.

[FatherStorm]

I've modified the popup script to automatically add a watermark that includes the IP of the accessing computer, the date and time, and the copyright message of your choice, as well as a copyright alert. You can see it in action here...

 

 

THe actual image..

 

and is based on the item Here

[vladimir]

I was searching for some kinda solution and i came up to this topic so here is what i did.

 

Use FTP Client to connect to your web. Go to osCommerce root folder and open the file popup_image.php for editing. After

<script language="javascript"><!--
var i=0;
function resize() {
 if (navigator.appName == 'Netscape') i=40;
 if (document.images[0]) window.resizeTo(document.images[0].width +30, document.images[0].height+60-i);
 self.focus();
}

around line 33 copy paste this code

var message="Function is disabled!\n\nContents & Graphics Copyright www.PolynesianStyle.com\nOur work is not Public Domain, and should NOT be taken from this site.";
function clickIE4(){
if (event.button==2){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}

function clickNS4(e){
if (document.layers||document.getElementById&&!document.all){
if (e.which==2||e.which==3){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
}


function disableselect(e){
return false
}

function reEnable(){
return true
}

//if IE4+
document.onselectstart=new Function ("return false")

//if NS6
if (window.sidebar){
document.onmousedown=disableselect
document.onclick=reEnable
}

if (document.layers){
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
document.onmousedown=clickNS4;
}
else if (document.all&&!document.getElementById){
document.onmousedown=clickIE4;
}

document.oncontextmenu=new Function("alert(message);return false")

 

Save the file and go see what you did :D.

For sample on how this nasty script works go to PolynesianStyle

 

 

Regards,

Vladimir Abadzhiev

-----------------------------------------------------------

One OS to fool them all

One browser to find them

One email client to bring them all

And through security holes, blind them...

[Guest]

Of course, there's enormous problems with that technique. For instance, it takes me two clicks to turn off javascript and then I can right click all I want, save all your images and source to my heart's content. This script will be effective against only the most casual of attempts. I honestly feel it's counterproductive; the effect it will have on actual thieves is in my opinion less than the negative effect it has on general ease of use of your website. A lot of genuine customers like to use the right-click menu, I'm one of them, and stuff like this just pisses me off.

[vladimir]

True that but it takes me about 40 mins on a picture product to take a picture, edit it in Photoshop, write description and put it on-line which is kinda sad if someone gets the picture easily and uses it for his/hers auction on eBay for instance.

[Guest]

My opinion on that has always been that if they want to do it, they're going to no matter what you do. The amount of work it takes ME to do something shouldn't be a factor when it comes to an issue about someone else stealing the images. It's irrelevant. I'm spending that amount of time no matter what. If you're really concerned, I do believe that watermarking is the only effective means of dealing with it, and again this will only deter those who don't want to spend a few minutes in Photoshop cleaning up.

[vladimir]

I agree with you but the topic of this forum initially was:

Is there a way to have some sort of protection installed into oscommerce to remove this ability from my competitors.

I gave one of my ideas. Right now i'm working on a code to make the File - SaveAs function disabled so that it would be more than an issue for some unexperienced users. In general, there is no protection for anything. If there is some sort of protection against something, someone is already working on a method to break n enter. I don't really see the reason for pointing that out since we are not talking about computer security in general. Watermark is a good option too but since in our store we are selling Hawaiian/Aloha products, putting a watermark on any of the patterns would just make it ugly for the customers. At least i know that the percentage of people capable/having the patience to"invent" another way of stealing the pictures is lower after inserting the code in the header. The Washington Post Official web page is an example of Disabled File - SaveAs function.

Washington Post. Check it out.

 

 

Regards,

Vladimir Abadzhiev

 

-----------------------------------------------------------

One OS to fool them all

One browser to find them

One email client to bring them all

And through security holes, blind them...

[lasermemory.com]

Disabling right click, disabling file save as are all not much use when all most users need to do is look in the tempory internet files folders for the cached images....... They are saved automatically without the user having to even try to download them!

[vladimir]

There is code for that as well. What it does is it erases the tmp files after the page is closed, during web browsing the files show vulnerability error. However, as i mentioned earlier there is no need of pointing that out. Check out 2advanced.com for some of these implementations. btw it would be great if we continue this topic with solutions not just problems. Thank you for your time and consideration ;).

[AXM]

There is a contribution I have been using on my test website called On The Fly. It resizes you images into thumbnails with optional watermark and can make the popup image (as well as directly linked image) show a watermark. The watermark is a PNG image that you create with a black image. The contribution's php file copies the PNG over your image...sets the PNG transparent color as black and then sends the image to the browser.

 

Works perfectly in its function. One problem I had on it was the instructions weren't as clear (atleast I didn't get it as i'm a little slow sometimes) was that the PNG watermark should be bigger than the image. I thought it would repeat across like a table background image..WRONG. So I created my company logo on a black background and copied across a new canvas about 800x800. So as long as I don't have any image larger than 800px width or height it'll work fine.

 

So that's what you want. You can set the thumbnails to have watermarks...which I think might be a little overkill for such a small image...but nice to have that feature.

 

Sorry if I can't remember the exact name of the contribution or have a link. I just remember seeing a slight bit of code segmented off with Ron/Rod? and OTF On-The-Fly in the HTML Output file and two external php files that handle the thumbnail and image requests.

 

Hopefully this works for you. Thank goodness for all these contributions. :-)

[seadogg]

Taking your images could be beneficial if you are selling to these persons, if they are buying from you it gives you more exposure. if not, you may contact the image originator for further info.

Hope this helps

[pilar]

Hi!

 

Its imposible to protect 100% the images, by sure, but you can make very dificult to take your images for 95% of the surfers.

 

I discover 2 programs to protect the HTML files and images.

 

They work on diferent ways, and they have diferent prices:

 

1) about 70 US$

 

http://www.protware.com

 

 

2) about 15US$

http://www.aw-soft.com/products.html

 

 

Both are very good, the second extremelly easy to use

 

 

Hope in helps to everybody!

 

Pedro

[AndersGeorgsson]

I saw someone use the PrtSc button and then paste into their image

editor!

 

/Anders

 

Another way to get the images is to go in to your temp internet files folder and grab them from there.

 

Pompeylad.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[ccubed_99]

Three choices. Water marks, Flash, Java Script. Watermarks can make the picture unusable as they can add distortion to the image as was suggested in a previous comment. The watermark can be invisible and you can pay a service to keep track of the locals of your images allowing you to track culprits. Flash does not allow downloads of an image or animation unless you designate it as downloadable. There are plenty of javaScript sites with free and effective code, just look under security and you should be able to find a few scripts that will protect your image. Then again what stops a screen dump.

[Guest]

aight i'm going to make a contribution to make it 99% impossible for people to steal your images. Look for it either today or tomorrow called "Protect Images". Using some php coding of my own and the javascript function to stop right-clicks.

[Sincraft]

Funny Vger you should mention bandwidth theft. You can detect this rather easily and which items they are using.

Here's a funny little story.

One of my clients websites who had over 5000 quality images up was being hotlinked to from another site that sold a few of the same products. The best part is, these items were their 'hot items' so we had an enormous amount of hits from this. Almost 100k in one month. I checked back on them as I normally do people I do work for and looked through their stats after noticing the site seemed a bit slow.

 

Over 20 images of 600-800k were being hotlinked to and based on the hit counter of this website, this was making them a pile of money. All of them were form a site with very blackhat seo methods and located in India. So we really couldn't do much right?

 

Well we changed the name of our images with our linked products with the same photos/schematics - and simply replaced the images with pictures of (ok please look away if you are offended easily) - pictures of steaming piles of **IT.

 

LOL - the funny part isn't over. The funny part is, the webmaster/owner of the company in broken english began to send us emails saying he was going to sue us because we ruined his reputation and lost much business for him. LLLLLOOOOOLLLL. The best part is - this guy also claimed to be a 'network security expert' - of which many topologies, schematics, etc were being linked to for examples stolen from us and much of the text. All of the pictures had the text "If you think this company knows anything about security - then you are full of **IT"

 

 

BTW - if someone wants to take your images - they can easily do so. Javascript, flash etc - are only deterients by newbs. Watermarks are the best. Experiement with watermarks that match the color of the item of the photo you are overlaying and make sure its a jpg. Then put color strands inside the water mark like red, blue and green. ALmost impossible to remove using any methods. The time it would take them they might as well create their own pictures. We learned our lesson, and implemented this - also hopefully the team from India learned their lesson too.

 

S

[dblake]

LOL!

[rfflemflam]

You can't stop anyone from takeing your images!!! Even if it is watermarked or protected, if they can see the image on your site, all they have to do is use HyperSnap DX 5! It's just like taking a picture of what you want that is on your site...