Protect image download

Question

I know the best way to protect image download is not putting it on internet in the first place   I assume there is no 100  protection against image download and that if a user can see an image on internet he can with a bit of experience find access to download it   I am aware of transparent  gif or  png covering the images or using background image CSS property to protect it and prevent right click download but are there   other ways to complicate image download and therefore prevent image download by most users   Here is simple code to start with     x000D   x000D   lt img src  http   placekitten com 600 450  gt  x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Accepted Answer

No there actually is no way to prevent a user from doing a particular task. But you can always take measures! The image sharing websites have a huge team of developers working day and night to create such an algorithm where you prevent user from saving the image files.

First way

Try this:

$('img').mousedown(function (e) {
  if(e.button == 2) { // right click
    return false; // do nothing!
  }
}

So the user won't be able to click on the Save Image As... option from the menu and in turn he won't get a chance to save the image.

Second way

Other way is to use background-image. This way, the user won't be able to right click and Save the Image As... But he can still see the resources in the Inspector.

Third way

Even I am new to this one, few days ago I was surfing Flickr when I tried to right click, it did not let me do a thing. Which in turn was the first method that I provided you with. Then I tried to go and see the inspector, there I found nothing. Why? Since they were using background-image and at the same time they were using data:imagesource as its location.

Which was amazing for me too. You can precvent user from saving image files this way easily.

It is known as Data URI Scheme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme

Note

Please remember brother, when you're letting a user surf your website you're giving him READ permissions on the server side so he can read all the files without any problem. The same is the issue with image files. He can read the image files, and then he can easily save them. He downloads the images on the first place when he is surfing your website. So there is not an issue for him to save them on his disk.

User · Answer

I know this question is quite old  but I have not seen this solution here before  If you rewrite the  lt body gt  tag to   lt body oncontextmenu  quot return false  quot  gt  you can prevent the right click without using javascript  However  you can t prevent keyboard shortcuts with HTML  For this  you must use Javascript

User · Answer

There is no way to protect image downloading  This is because the image has to be downloaded by the browser for it to be seen by the user  There are tricks  like the transparent background you specified  to restrict certain operations like image right click and saving to browser cache folder  but there isn t a way for truly protecting the images

User · Answer

As other answers said  if you can see it you can copy download it   To add up to the other answers  just for your information  you can add invisible or tricky watermarks to your images  http   www cgrats com create-an-invisible-watermark-in-photoshop html  just an example  there are more techniques  just google for invisible watermarks   Anyway if you want to prove the ownership of your image a good way is to have a bigger resolution copy for yourself  and always publish a lower resolution   size one  Or publish it also on a  public  media like     deviantart or flickr or something where people can t change the upload date  This way you can prove you had that image before anybody else

User · Answer

Another way to remove the  save image  context menu is to use some CSS  This also leaves the rest of the context-menu intact   img       pointer-events  none      It makes all img elements non-reactive to any mouse events such as dragging  hovering  clicking etc   See spec for more info

User · Answer

As some people already said that it is not possible to prevent people to download your pictures  a trick could be something like this     document  ready function            img   bind  contextmenu   function e           return false                 This trick prevents from the right click on all img  Obviously people can open the source code and download the images using links in your source code

User · Answer

First realise that  you will never be able to completely stop an image being downloaded because if the user is viewing the image they have already downloaded it  temporarily  on their browser   Also bear in mind the majority of users will probably not be web developers but they may still examine the source code     I really discourage disabling right click  this can be extremely frustrating for the end user and is not safe anyway since the image can still be dragged into a new window and downloaded   I would suggest the method used by CampSafari i e   img       pointer-events  none      but with an improvement   So first lets remove the url of your image and add an id attributes to it   Like so    lt img id  cutekitten  gt    Next we need to add some JavaScript to actually show the image  Keep this well away from the  lt img gt  tag you are trying to protect   document getElementById  cutekitten   src    http   placekitten com 600 450     Now we need to use the CSS    cutekitten       pointer-events  none      The image cannot be dragged into a new window as well downloaded via right click     JSFiddle    Yet another method you could use is the embed tag    lt embed src  http   placekitten com 600 450  gt  lt  embed gt    This will prevent the right click

User · Answer

Here are a few ways to protect the images on your website   1  Put a transparent layer or a low opaque mask over image  Usually source of the image is open to public on each webpage  So the real image is beneath this mask and become unreachable  Make sure that the mask image should be the same size as the original image    lt body gt        lt div style  background-image  url real background image jpg    gt            lt img src  transparent image gif  style  height 300px width 250px    gt        lt  div gt    lt  body gt    2  Break the image into small units using script  Super simple image tiles script is used to do this operation  The script will break the real image into pieces and hide the real image as watermarked  This is a very useful and effective method for protecting images but it will increase the request to server to load each image tiles

User · Answer

As we know there is no proper method to avoid image theft  But we can reduce it for some extent  We can avoid those people who are not geek in computers to download the image as well as your code   Here are some JQuery tricks we should include in our site to reduce image theft   Disable right click  Disable Ctrl  combination  ex Ctrl s Ctrl u   Better to disable Ctrl key        But user can also download the web page using developer tools in Firefox  We don t have solution for this because this will be on the client side and is provided by the user s browser    You can find the code for all the above listed on stack overflow

User · Answer

this code will disable Right-Click on Win or Click and hold on mac to open  contextmenu      img   on  contextmenu  function e  return false       It s so simple and always works fine  and it s not depends on OS or Browser that you re using

User · Answer

There is no full-proof method to prevent your images being downloaded stolen   But  some solutions like  watermarking your images from client side or server side   implement a background image  disable prevent right clicks  slice images into small pieces and then present as a complete image to browser  you can also use flash to show images   Personally  recommended methods are  Watermarking and flash  But it is a difficult and almost impossible mission to accomplish  As long as user is able to  see  that image  means they take  screenshot  to steal the image

User · Answer

1  Disable the Right Click on all Images let allImages   document querySelectorAll  quot img quot    allImages forEach  value   gt       value oncontextmenu    e   gt           e preventDefault              2  Disable the Pointer Event Using CSS img      pointer-events  none     3  Put a transparent overlay over all the Images  lt div class  quot imageContainer quot  gt       lt div class  quot overlayDiv quot  gt  lt  div gt       lt img src  quot Image jpg quot  alt  quot Image quot  gt   lt  div gt    And some CSS like this  imageContainer      position  relative    img      position  absolute      width  100       height  auto      top  0px      left  0px     overlayDiv      position  absolute      width  100       height  auto      top  0px      left  0px      background-color  transparent      z-index  2     4  Put your Image as a Background Image div      background-image  url Image jpg       background-size  cover     These methods will only work on normal users because they most probably don t know about the inspector or how to check source code  But a web developer can easily download these files  there is no such way you can disable the inspector completely    At the end i would like to add few words  Technically  Now think about this you are sending a Image from your server to another computer over HTTP  and you are at the same time trying to prevent it  it doesn t make any sense      you should always assume that anything that enters the machine of the user can be retrieved back now or later  no matter how hard you try  to hide it with encryption or maybe like youtube  sending the thing in chunks  and collecting them in browser  getting the image ultimately is hard for a common user but not for people with a lot of technical background  maybe they are intercepting the entire network on Operating System Level  how you gonna stop them there

User · Answer

Try this one-   lt script gt       function             document  on  contextmenu    img   function               return false                  jQuery      lt  script gt

User · Answer

If it is only image then JavaScript is not really necessary  Try using this in your html file      lt img src  sample-img-15 jpg  alt     height  24  width  100  onContextMenu  return false     gt

[html] Protect image download

First way

Second way

Third way

Note

Examples related to html

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