Framing web pages

[Bradley Hook]

Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
> I have a client who is concerned that there are other web sites that are 
> taking his content and placing it within frames on their web site as if it 
> were their own.  I know I've seen this happen, and I think I've seen "click 
> here if someone has this site framed" buttons or some such.  Does anyone know 
> of a way to prevent the pages from being grabbed in a frame to begin with?

While you can make it slightly more difficult to borrow content, you
can't really stop it on a public-facing server. Every solution you put
in place can be circumvented with a relative amount of ease. Even
securely authenticated sites are often ripped off one way or another.

However, framing is more annoying in that it eats up your bandwidth for
someone else's benefit. The prevention measures available to your *are*
effective at reducing bandwidth munchers. Generally a combination of
simple referrer checks and javascript checks are sufficient.

The easiest way to make your content difficult to plagiarize is to weave
references to yourself or your organization all throughout the content.
This way, the thief has to take the time to clean up the references
before using your stuff. If your content updates frequently, the clean
up is usually more trouble than it's worth.

~Bradley