[deadlyhifi]

OK. After doing more reading I agree that hotlinking is bad practice.

However, we get 2500 posts a day on the forum, moderating all this is an impossible task. We have a team of about 10, but lots of images do get through.

I was hoping there would a technical fix.

We are now considering a blacklist – which would be impossibly long, or a whitelist – which wouldn’t cover all acceptable places, especially personal web hosting accounts.