rgbstock
Spike in downloads?
1. ColinBrough28 June 2016, 13:20 GMT +02:00
Maybe nothing, but I've noticed an intriguing spike in the number of my images being downloaded in the past week or so. Anyone else seeing something similar? Are the site download stats spiking?
Graph of the total number of my images downloaded from RGBStock since 2010 here: http://www.fintry-church.org.uk/RGBDownloads.png
I've not uploaded any new images, or otherwise done anything that would make me expect such a spike.
2. xymonau28 June 2016, 17:22 GMT +02:00
I know when the newsletter goes out they spike, but I noticed that myself.
3. micromoth29 June 2016, 6:36 GMT +02:00
Me too. Up to about 250 downloads per day for the past week, and mainly on one theme, e.g., boats, autumn. Someone is stockpiling!
4. coolhewitt2330 June 2016, 18:29 GMT +02:00
I've noticed a spike as well, It might be worth the time to investigate who is actually downloading all the images. I promote this website a little bit. I haven't had a lot of time lately to upload content to this site. They can stockpile all the images as long as they aren't selling them.
5. xymonau1 July 2016, 15:28 GMT +02:00
There is a limit on 100 downloads per day per user, but that doesn't stop someone logging on as different users, as long as they have a number of email addresses, which aren't hard to get. I'm equally suspicious of some downloaders and I have found so many redistributing my images, and it's hard to get action taken against them sometimes.
It pays to do a Chrome Google search by dragging your image - or a smaller version of it - into the image bar. Unfortunately, I always end up with a full day's work on most of my pics - contacting websites or having to fill out formal things to have them removed. It's very frustrating.
6. micromoth1 July 2016, 23:13 GMT +02:00
@5 My images have been downloaded more than 650 times today - someone has a lot of email addresses!
7. ColinBrough2 July 2016, 16:07 GMT +02:00
If someone has setup a lot of accounts/email addresses to bulk download images, they wouldn't need all that many addresses. Site has 133K images. That's 1330 email addresses if you want to download them all in one day! Presumably bandwidth won't allow for that - so divide over three weeks (21 days), for the sake of argument. That's 64 distinct email addresses/accounts, each scripted to download 100 images a day - and that's to get every image from the site. That's do-able - scripting wouldn't be too hard, but to be properly useful would need to download all the image tags too - a little trickier, but still do-able. Absolute security isn't really possible; I reckon what we've got is probably reasonable. If someone with access to the site logs could see the IP addresses or the accounts which are currently downloading lots of images, they could see whether we've just become very popular (a good thing!), or whether someone/some people are siphoning off all the images (a bad thing!).
8. coolhewitt232 July 2016, 19:20 GMT +02:00
I know in Asia, You can purchase books of pictures with the actual Jpeg images on CDs. These books come with about 30 CDs with various file formats. These books are generally purchased by designers in Asia. I would also be interested in the IP address of the downloads. I wouldn't be surprised if its from Asia.
9. jazza3 July 2016, 23:36 GMT +02:00
We are looking into this and if we see any abuse we will take action. That is all I can say in public because I can not talk about the security actions we take. But you can contact me any time.
10. coolhewitt2310 July 2016, 3:49 GMT +02:00
I noticed on July 5, 2016 a big spike of over 3000 downloads. I'm really curious as to the source of the downloads. Can Jazza provide any information. Its there a specific IP address downloading a lot of images. I was also thinking that people might be relying on free sites more because the economy is in terrible shape. Small businesses can't afford to purchase images from expensive websites such as istock.
11. xymonau10 July 2016, 8:16 GMT +02:00
coolhewitt23 - contact jazza directly via the contact link on his profile.
