QUOTE
Source: altlab.com
Bandwidth theft or "hotlinking" is direct linking to a web site's files (images, video, etc.). An example would be using an <img> tag to display a JPEG image you found on someone else's web page so it will appear on your own site, eBay auction listing, weblog, forum message post, etc.
Bandwidth theft or "hotlinking" is direct linking to a web site's files (images, video, etc.). An example would be using an <img> tag to display a JPEG image you found on someone else's web page so it will appear on your own site, eBay auction listing, weblog, forum message post, etc.
When you hotlink images, every time those images are accessed it uses bandwidth on the server that hosts these images. When you do this, you are stealing bandwidth.
If someone has been kind enough to make avatar and/or signature banners and allow you to use these images as your own personal avatar and/or signature, please show some courtesy, and do not hotlink to their images.
Instead, save the image(s) you want (right-click, save image as) to save them to your computer. Once you have a copy of the image(s) you like, you can host the pictures on your own. There are plenty of free image hosting services that you can upload the files to. Two such popular sites include: photobucket.com and imageshack.us.
