Technical Background- How to stop links to your site

Unwelcome links are directing users to your site? Why turn to a lawyer, when a technician can also do the job? Why not stop the link with a short script? Faster than any court could act!

Many technical countermeasures against links exist. Basically there two different possibilities. A webmaster can use server or client based scripts. Both usually consist only out of a few lines of code. While client based scripts are ineffective, when the browser of a user does not execute e.g. java script, server based scripts are very reliable.

Ott, Stephan, Technische Schutzmöglichkeiten gegen Links
Arnoud Engelfriet, Frames FAQ: Avoiding Getting "Framed" -- Is There Any Way To Prevent Getting Framed? (Feb. 28, 1998)
Chuck Musciano, Still More Tricks to Frame-Proofing Your Pages
A BOZO FILTER for a Web Page
Wille, Christoph, Unerwünschte Referer sperren
Burns, Joe, Frames Yes! Frames No!

Framekiller is a term commonly used for a piece of JavaScript code that doesn't allow a webpage to be displayed within a frame. A frame is a subdivision of a web browser window and can act like a smaller window, as described in Website Framing. This kind of script is often used to prevent a frame from an external website being loaded from within a frameset without permission.

The typical source code for a framekiller script is: <script type="text/javascript">if (top!=self) top.location.href=self.location.href;</script>

February 2003 Update: A list of websites, that provide Perl Scripts (with or without charge) to stop linking can be found here and here, and PHP-Scripts here.

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