Suddenly Customers Get an Error Message When Downloading Images

I’m trying to protect images from being accessed by others. I sell downloadbale cartoons using a child theme of Woocommerce’s Storefront.

I keep the images in a folder outside the html directory. To prevent someone stumbling across them I put an htacess file in the folder that says “Options All -Indexes” and a blank Index.php page.

Buyers get a link to download a jpg after they pay. The link is coded so they don’t know the direct path.

This worked great until I added some more products yesterday. People can still download products that I had uploaded before yesterday, but with the new products they got an error message.

Here’s an old product https://mchumor.com/cartoon/4684-skiing-cartoon/
Here’s a new product https://mchumor.com/cartoon/5122-skiing-cartoon/

I removed the htaccess and index files and cartoons from the new products could be downloaded with no problem, but my images were vulnerable.

As a test I created a new product and afterwards I uploaded the htaccess and index files. Again customers could download old products, but not the newly created ones.

Somethings about the Woocommerce system have changed since I started using it, so maybe they changed something that effects this.

Not that this is related to this problem (or I don’t think so), but here’s an example of how I know things have changed: I have variable rates for the cartoons (e.g., teachers pay $7.50, text book publishers pay $100). They all get the same image, and it used to be I could bulk add the file-path to all 12 variations. Now I have to add it to each one individually.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any help you can give.
Theresa (T-) McCracken
humble and frustrated cartoonist