FUSKER - A Permanent Solution?
 

First let me say that I believe that anyone who submits galleries or runs a paysite and doesn't have some kind of hotlink protection is just begging for trouble. I don't have much sympathy for you when you get Fuskered. Having said that, I still believe what Fusker does is wrong and I am ready to do something about it.

If something irritates me, I like to try to find an innovative way to deal with it. I have effictively shut down a few medium-sized phishers by writing a little script that connects to their script via a proxy and submits false information over & over again so they are flooded with bogus customer data. Even if someone is stupid enough to give the phishers their actual login information, the phisher will more than likely never see it due to the tremendous amount of bogus data I have sent them. This is particularly effective when there is more than one person running the script...but I digress.

I was thinking about the Fusker problem today and was trying to figure out a legal but effective way to deal with it. Here's what I came up with:

I can write a script that will connect to Fusker every 30 minutes or so and check all of the newest "Fuskers" that are listed. When the script finds one that has working images, the script will do a quick whois on the domain and send the owner of the domain an email explaining what Fusker is and how to stop it from stealing their bandwidth. There will obviously have to be a lot more to it, but that's my basic idea. If anyone (especially other programmers) have any ideas on how to improve upon this, please let me know.

I forsee [email protected] getting a lot of email from this. :Oh crap

Yeah, I thought of that. I guess I can't help those who don't want to be helped.

Most competent webmasters know how to use .htaccess but for some reason lots don't bother to do it.

That's an awesome idea. Would really show people that they need to protect their images.

This doesn't work. Fusker has taught their surfers to copy and paste image locations into the browsers. Therefore 1/2 the requests don't come from Fusker themselves.

The basic .htaccess code you have listed first is one way to slow the traffic though. :thumbsup

I am going to say this again for people that haven't heard me before.

Fusker is not hitting any of my domains. I threatened them with a lawsuit and I intend to follow through with it if they list me again.

I emailed them a complete list of my domains and threatened if any of them showed up on their boards they would be sued.

They responded and said my domains are blocked in their script. Since then I have not had any hits from fusker.

webmaster (at) fusker dot com

Email them give it a try. It worked for me.

Yep :thumbsup

Exactly :thumbsup

Funny how people are always trying to find a way to stop things without first going to the source and just asking

exact same thing here..happened once, i asked him to stop, and he did

still doesn't make me feel good about them though...they still suck and need to die

Babaganoosh, regardless of all the things that people say and how many other ways there are to block the fuskers, your idea is a valid one and worth a few minutes of your time for the better good of the internet. Like someone else said, it won't work flawlessly due to false contact info, but the few times it does work will add to fuskers problems and make our existence a little bettter. I give your idea a :thumbsup:

A nice e-card to them asking them to stop couldn't hurt

True enough. Send him a postcard.

:drinkup

Dear Burglar,

I would appreciate it if you would stop breaking into my home and the homes of my family.

Thanks in advance!
-Babaganoosh


It's not something that you should have to ask for. In fact, if you WANT your images hotlinked you should have to contact them. Not the other way around. Being included in their "service" without asking is theft, plain and simple.

let's just DDoS him

If he ever hotlinked me I might do it. Unfortunately the little trick I did on the phishers brought the police to my door. I didn't really get in trouble but they suggested very strongly that I knock it off.

The advertisers are the way to go.

If they dont make money they cant stay up.

If your neighbour was stealing your cars license plate every morning and you actually caught him on tape, do we really need instructions on how to weld our license plates to our bumpers ? or should the person be arrested.

And this is what's happening now Smokey :D

Heh-heh...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...sPageName=WDVW

Made it unprofitable... now it's for sale.

Buy it at your own risk (because you know this turd will build another one right ater you buy it, called, I dunno, fusscker...)

Alex

Send letter. If that doesn't work, send pain.

you know back when news groups were profitable, I used to post hundreds of pics to them, now that they are all spam new ways are needed.
All my images have my URL on them, so if they give me free advertising I let it go.
Sites I do not want to hotlink I simply put in my htaccess or referral protect the directory as with gallery pages, but overall I do not have a problem with the advertising I get from places like fusker.

Fusker and the thousands of similar sites are not always a bad thing.
I have even purchased advertising space on there and did really well - most of last summer I had a paid advertising on fusker.

You admit to advertising on Fusker? :1orglaugh

if it makes me money I would even advertise on your site :)

No you wouldn't. I wouldn't let you. :)

thats good, thats how I feel, I would never sell advertising space on my site either, but I will buy it from anyone who I think I can convert or who does convert for me.
You would be surprised how good fusker converts tho.
trying to get rid of them is like trying to get rid of usenet.
Usenet helped allot of sites get their first traffic, including mine.

LOL!! In the items terms..

Important notes:

* We receive traffic from other redirected names we own; this traffic would go away.

Fusker surfers will never sign up.

thats what I thought, but the same had been said for usenet also.
Anyone who spammed usenet back in 1997/98 knows better tho.

Venus, I found out why you're sticking up for Fusker...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...eaver-fest.com

http://www.whois.sc/venuscash.com
http://www.whois.sc/beaver-fest.com

You RUN a Fusker site!!!

I'm tempted to make this into a thread of its own. I wonder what webmasters would say about that?

Dare ya. :upsidedow

owned :1orglaugh

no shit... :disgust