Protecting My Images on-site? (ie is it possible to 'disable right-click'?)

  • Hello,
    I’m going to be hosting personally-photographed images on my site that I do not want people to ‘steal’. I know there’s probably nothing I can do to stop screenshots (my pictures do have my name in the corner though!), but I was hoping it’s possible to disable right-clicking on images that I host on my website (or do something else, such as what walmart does, see: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Timex-Mens-Fashion-Digital-Indiglo-Watch/10727980?findingMethod=rr )

    Thanks for any tips/thoughts on the matter! I know I can’t protect my photos perfectly if I intend to havce them online, but at least stopping people from harvesting all of them so easily would be nice!

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  • Right click disabling will not stop anyone downloading your images. In order to display a page, the web browser has to download it onto the visitor’s computer – including all images. If you don’t want people to download your images, don’t publish them on the web.

    All right disabling does is hijack your visitor’s browser – making the site very difficult for them to use in some cases.

    Thread Starter josephmgabriel

    (@josephmgabriel)

    I know it will not prohibit saving – but surely it will stop saving in many cases. Can you explain how this ‘hijacks’ and why that’s bad?

    surely it will stop saving in many cases.

    No. As an image protection step, it’s totally useless. All images on one of your pages have already been downloaded onto the visitor’s computer as soon as they visit it.

    Can you explain how this ‘hijacks’ and why that’s bad?

    How would you feel if I can over to your computer and slapped your hand away from the mouse every time you tried to right click? Pretty angry, I’d expect. That’s what you are doing if you disable right click in someone else’s web browser. At the very least, they have every right to be angry at you for interfering with their software without their permission.

    However, some people rely heavily on access to items in the right-click context menu – including access to items that actually help them move around a site because (for example) they cannot use a mouse or keyboard. Disabling right click might effectively leave them stranded on your site – unable to move to another site or even close their own browsing software.

    So by “hijack”, I mean literally taking over someone else’s software and stopping them from using it. That’s something you should never, ever, do. Not least because it is illegal to discriminate against disabled people in this fashion in many countries.

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